How to Make Pemmican

 

 



H/T to www.tacticalintelligence.net for this instructional post for the making of Pemmican.

http://www.tacticalintelligence.net/blog/how-to-make-pemmican.htm

Need some food that's light weight and nutritious for that long trip into the bush?  Why not Pemmican?

"Pemmican is a concentrated mixture of fat and protein used as a nutritious food. The word comes from the Cree word pimîhkân, which itself is derived from the word pimî, "fat, grease".^[1] It was invented by the native peoples of North America.^[2][3] It was widely adopted as a high-energy food by Europeans involved in the fur trade and later by Arctic and Antarctic explorers, such as Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen. "

"Traditionally, pemmican was prepared from the lean meat of large game such as buffalo, elk or deer. The meat was cut in thin slices and dried over a slow fire, or in the hot sun until it was hard and brittle. About five pounds of meat are required to make one pound of dried meat suitable for pemmican. Then it was pounded into very small pieces, almost powder-like in consistency, using stones. The pounded meat was mixed with melted fat in an approximate 1:1 ratio.^[5] In some cases, dried fruits such as saskatoon berries, cranberries, blueberries, or choke cherries were pounded into powder and then added to the meat/fat mixture. The resulting mixture was then packed into rawhide pouches for storage.
A bag of buffalo pemmican weighing about 90 pounds was called a Taureau by the Métis of Red River.^[6] It generally took the meat of one buffalo to fill a Taureau."