Simple and Delicious Pemmican Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the ratio of fat to meat in pemmican? ›

The pânsâwân was then spread across a tanned animal hide pinned to the ground, where it was beaten with flails or ground between two large stones till it turned into very small pieces, almost powder-like in its consistency. The pounded meat was mixed with melted fat in an approximate 1:1 ratio by weight.

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.

Heat rendered fat on stove at medium until liquid. Add liquid fat to dried meat and dried fruit, and mix in nuts and honey. Mix everything by hand. Let cool and store.

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.

Melt tallow from beef, venison, elk or bison. Do not substitute a soft fat such as lard, bear fat, duck, or goose fat, Crisco or butter. The denser and more saturated the fat, the better. Combine powdered meat and berries, pouring melted tallow until coated.

My starting temp will be around 200F for about an hour. I'll then reduce the heat to 165F for about 12 hours or until the meat is cracker dry.

Although we definitely like the fat, the fat is best added after the lean meat is dried and pulverized. This will make the pemmican with the best shelf life. 1–Place raw ground meat in a mixing bowl. Mix in your favorite spices like: black pepper, anise, rosemary, lavender.

Pemmican consists of two fundamental ingredients — dried meat and tallow — and is used as a highly nutritious, on-the-go food staple. Spices can be and usually are added, while dried berries are sometimes a feature.

40 day winter: 12800 pemmican. 50 day winter: 16000 pemmican. These are near-minimums, though, and you should shoot for higher. (I say near because a colonist can survive for five days without food.)

Pemmican ingredients varied widely, but they always included lean venison or buffalo meat mixed with fat. Some pemmican recipes also incorporated dried berries and nuts for added flavor and nutrition.

Can bacon grease be used in pemmican? ›

That's entirely up to you. I used the fact from 3 pieces of center cut bacon, used some stored bacon fat and then added coconut oil until I had about a half a cup of fat. If you have some bacon grease stored away, this is the perfect time to put it to use. The cooked pieces of bacon were used in the recipe.

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.

Jerky, pemmican, hardtack, and parched corn are ways to put game, livestock, wild berries, and garden produce by in times of plenty. Easily made, transported, and stored, they became frontier staples for travelers, hunters, and warriors. They are still excellent trail foods and emergency rations.

Those employed in the fur trade were quick to utilize pemmican. The meat ingredient could be any available game, but typically was buffalo. A single buffalo provided the meat, fat, and hide bag used to compress and store approximately 100 pounds pemmican.

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.

One final note: Exact measurements aren't given here because of the variability that can exist between different dry ingredients and how dry they ultimately are. In general, pemmican calls for a ratio of roughly 1:1 tallow to dry ingredients.

And on this, experts concur — the most popular and flavorful ratio of lean to fat comes in at 80/20. Paul Vaccari, owner of New York City's Piccinini Brothers, which sells to restaurants as well as individuals, says his most popular mixture for hamburgers is an 80/20 ground chuck.

It really depends on what you're looking for in your ground beef. Generally, the 80 to 20 ratio is preferred for hamburger patties. You can use it in our best burger recipe. While it's true that leaner meat helps keep the patty together, a higher level of fat ultimately makes for a juicier, more flavorful burger.

To make more healthful burgers—but ones that are still pretty juicy and tasty—choose ground beef that is 80 percent lean and 20 percent fat. Ground beef that contains less than 15 percent fat makes dry and somewhat tasteless burgers.