Are you interested in seeing how to make pemmican?
Are you looking for a recipe that serves as the ultimate survival food and is easy to make with readily available ingredients? Perhaps you want something tasty that also stores well?
Welcome to the ultimate guide to the infamous pemmican recipe. You’ll see the step by step instructions, the ingredients, and everything else you need on how to make it below.
Another survival recipe from The Survival Blackbook, In this guide, you’re going to learn how the Native Americans made Pemmican, also known as the Ultimate Survival Food.
Then look no further, for pemmican is the perfect solution for you. But what exactly is pemmican? Read on to find out more about it and how to make it.
It’s only natural to give you a brief history of the food since it has so much of it. But first, let’s clarify the question those unfamiliar with this food have on their minds.
What is Pemmican?
Also commonly described as “The Ultimate Survival Food“, Pemmican is a Native American food that was later adapted by Arctic explorers. The word pemmican is derived from the Cree word for fat. It is a paste of dried lean meat, mixed along with some berries and melted fat.
Pemmican has been used as an emergency MRE for survival in times of crisis dating back more years than I can count.
The pioneers and Native American Indians made pemmican. It’s reputation proceeds it. It has become one of the most widely known and effective survival food recipes.
It was traditionally stored in leather bags and was kept for months, if not years.
Since it is a nutrient-dense food, voyagers and traders on expeditions used to rely on pemmican as a major food source. And it was through these people that pemmican was popularized in European nations.
Ingredients
Traditional pemmican recipes call for lean meat of a large game like deer, moose, elk, caribou or bison. And the commonly used berries were chokecherries, Saskatoon berries or even currants. Melted suet was used as the binding.
For a recipe more suited for the modern kitchens, the following ingredients are needed:
Dried lean meat like buffalo, game or beef.
Dried berries like cranberries/blueberries/chokeberries/juneberries. Take the same amount as the dried meat.
Molten lard- 1/8th cup for 1 pound of dried meat.
Sugar to taste.
Equipment
For equipment that’s needed for this survival recipe, the Native Americans used stones to grind the meat. If you’re feeling extra primitive and want a challenge, grab a couple of stones. If not, we will skip that and opt for age-appropriate appliances if that’s okay with you.
1. A good quality food processor. 2. A mixing bowl. 3. A mixing spoon. 4. Paper bags for storage. 5. An oven, if you have to dry your meat or berries.
8 Steps On How To Cook Pemmican
The steps on this recipe don’t take long and you’ll find it to be easy. Let’s get started.
Step 1: Cut Into Strips
If the meat needs to be dried then cut it into thin strips and lay it on a baking rack in an oven preheated to 170 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. It should take about 4 hours and will be rock hard dry when ready.
Step 2. Berry Dry Time
Similarly, for the berries, you can dry them in the oven. Put them on a baking paper-lined sheet pan in an oven heated to 225 degrees Fahrenheit for about 3 to 3.5 hours.
Step 3. Grind
Use a meat grinder to grind the meat into shreds. This is optional, you don’t have to grind it. Small chunks of the dry meat work just as good, it’s preference.
Step 4. Add Berries
Then add an equal amount of dried berries and grind again.
Step 5. Perfect Meat Texture
Take the mixture out into a mixing bowl. The meat should have the consistency of course powder and the berries should be chunky.
Step 6. Pour Molten Lard
Now pour in the molten lard and mix with a spoon. The fat will hold the mixture together. Add sugar to taste.
Step 7. Nik-Nak Patty Whack
You can form the mixture into small patties with your hand and store them paper bags. It can be refrigerated for longer storage.
Step 8. Survive and Thrive
Enjoy your pemmican as is, boiled or in stews.
Conclusion
So there you have it. A recipe that has been passed down through generations and is considered to be one of the best survival foods around.
One of the best things about this recipe is that it calls for simple ingredients that can be customized according to one’s taste. Do give this recipe for pemmican a try.
I hope this article on how to make pemmican like the pioneers did helped you understand the recipe better. You might also like our recipe post on how to make mud apples and also how to make Mormon johnnycake.
Do you know any other ways other than the traditional Native American way of cooking pemmican?
During the fur trade, pemmican was most often made by killing the buffalo, jerking the meat, making hair-out bags from its hide, and rendering tallow from the animal's marrow, suet, or fat. The dried meat was then broken up by pounding.
Made properly, pemmican would last indefinitely and could sustain an individual for months. Our modern-day version consists of a blend of bison, beef, berries, and other natural ingredients.
To make pemmican, Native Americans ground dried meat into powder and mixed it with rendered animal fat and bone marrow. Occasionally, dried berries like Saskatoon berries and cranberries were added. The natives packed the pemmican tightly into bags made of bison hide for use when hunting or traveling.
The Red River Colony imposed on that economic order and, when famine threatened the settlement in mid-winter 1814, Governor Miles Macdonnell (1767-1828) issued what became known as the Pemmican Proclamation. This law was meant to stop the export of pemmican to NWC forts in the West and retain it for the HBC settlers.
I have made pemmican several times. I currently have some in the fridge that is roughly seven years old and is still good due to it being extremely difficult for bacteria to get into and being sealed in an airtight container in a fridge.
Today I pulled all the pemmican out of the freezer, thawed it, heated it to a soft, melty mixture, and added a bunch of spices, all dried, of course: garlic salt, oregano, onion, black pepper, cayenne, six pepper mix, beef bullion, chives, and what ever else I could find! The resulting mix was darn tasty!
Add salt at a rate of 1.5-1.9% of the total weight of your powders used. For the original recipe, your mix will only be meat/salt. For a dried fruit mix, start with 30% dried fruit and 70% meat powder. Increase sweetness to taste by increasing the fruit powder or by adding honey.
One of the two primary ingredients for making pemmican is dried meat, as in dried beef or venison jerky. You can use store-bought jerky, but if it's very pliable it means there is residual moisture and moisture can make foods spoil.
At room temperature, pemmican can generally last from one to five years, but there are anecdotal stories of pemmican stored in cool cellars being safely consumed after a decade or more.
Pemmican, while nutritious, has a more uniform taste profile - predominantly meaty with the added richness of fat and a slight sweetness if berries are included. You won't find too much variation in different batches or styles.
You'll need a minimum of ½ cup of rendered fat (I used a blend of bacon fat and coconut oil) and you'll want it to be hot so that it doesn't start solidifying on you while mixing. Mix in the hot, rendered fat. A mixer works great here. A blender can easily get overwhelmed by this combination.
A: In the freezer, years. At room temp, a year easily. No surprise that over time they'll dry out, harden up and lose some flavor, but years after the best-by date they've saved me from hunger meltdown.
Traditionally, jerky was made using the sun, wind and smoke from fires to preserve and extend the shelf life of meat. Drying and smoking results in meat products that have a long storage life, allowing for the preservation of large amounts of meat that could be stored and consumed later.
The Ojibway, Cree and the Algonquian-speaking tribes call it Pimikan, meaning “manufactured grease.” The Lakota (Sioux) called it wasna ('wa' meaning “anything” and 'sna' meaning “ground up”). Pemmican could be made of virtually any lean, dried protein, including fish.
Colonists preserved food using eight basic methods: fermentation, burial, drying, curing, cooling, freezing, pickling, and canning. Fermentation happens when starches and sugars react with microorganisms and produce alcohol. Fall harvest arrives, grapes are plucked from the vines and apples from the orchards.
Stir- ring in a few ounces of pemmican to some hot water can make a hot, nourishing and appetite-satisfying soup. You don't want to survive on pemmican alone. Strenuous backpacking will lead to daily glycogen depletion, best re- plenished with carbohydrates.
Traditionally, jerky was made using the sun, wind and smoke from fires to preserve and extend the shelf life of meat. Drying and smoking results in meat products that have a long storage life, allowing for the preservation of large amounts of meat that could be stored and consumed later.
Introduction: My name is Barbera Armstrong, I am a lovely, delightful, cooperative, funny, enchanting, vivacious, tender person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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