Pemmican

[Forty Rod]

Not the brand name for the store bought so-called jerky, but the real stuff...anybody have a recipe for it?  Mine disappeared.

Stuff's great for eating cold on the trail, or heated up when you get to camp.

[Marshal Will Wingam]

Ya mean a pemmican ain't no ocean going bird with a big beak that gulps down sardines and mackerel?

[Delmonico]

Dried meat (jerky) pounded fine, some dried fruit and some rendered fat.  Pound the fruit and meat together and cover with the melted fat.  Stuff in a cleaned and scraped intestine and tie the ends.  (sausage casing)

Keeps for years and is a balanced meal, one of the foods one can live one.  Variations are as many as yer imagination.

[Mogorilla]

Hey forty,
In my younger days, I hung around a big time buckskinning family. (I was secretely fond of the only girl in the family, but good friends with her brothers.  She ignored me).   Anyway, we made pemmican.  Here is the recipe.

4 cups dried meat(usually deer, but beef was used on occasion.  the leaner the better.) The main cook in the bunch would soak the meat in a very gelatinous stock (when dried, it was known as hard soup or pocket soup.  the dried beef soup looked like a piece of hard candy)  After soaking, he would dry it over a smokey fire.   After dry, grind/pound meat in to a meally consistency.  Nearly a powder.

3 cups dried fruit - (we used raisins, dried cranberries, or dried blue berries.   Some times hazelnuts or black walnuts were added as well.  grind crush these as well.

2 cups rendered fat - for health reasons, I would use only beef fat. I also recall that we rendered the fat twice.  Someone told us this extended the shelf life.   

When fat is melted but only luke warm, combine everything in a big bowl and mix thoroughly.  pour out in a pan and make bars/patties about 1 inch thick.   

I remembered reading that some tribes then sealed the pemmican with more fat/tallow.  I really don't think this is necessary, but it probably gave them more calories in the diet.  This stuff takes some getting use to.  It is tasty, but much higher in fat than modern man is typically use to. 

[Forty Rod]

I recall mine used suet, whatever nuts you had handy, and honey.

Taste wasn't too bad and they were filling if you drank water with them.  Too much water and you'd get a belly ache that you would never forget.

Used to make them before hunting season to take along with dried fruits and "cold flour" mix.

Wrapped everything up in it's own wax paper pouch, hung a canteen on our belt, and we were good to go for a couple of days if we had a source to refill the canteens.

[El Peludo]

Mogorilla said:

2 cups rendered fat - for health reasons, I would use only beef fat. I also recall that we rendered the fat twice. ------ 

Beef fat for health reasons?  Was that because there was less chance of parasitic or other varmints, or something else that I am missing?  Wouldn't the rendering pretty much kill off any critters in the fat?  I know something has got past me, here.

[Mogorilla]

Don't really know why for health reasons,  it was scrawled on my notes, even looks like my handwritting.  I would guess that it would take a lot of deer to get enough fat.  I never cared for the taste of Bear, meat or fat.  Pork or beef fat would be readily available at most butchers.   I will try and dust off some brain cells and see why I had that.   I remember some of the guys eating this stuff the first few days getting what we called the "plains trots"  (plains tribe recipe and guys trotting to the woods quickly).  Mainly it was the high fat diet doing it to them. 

[Gus Hall]

I've always heard the term "rendered" fat. Is this just melted or do you do somthin' else to it? Still tryin to figure out some of Grandma's old recipies. Thanks.

[Delmonico]

Rendered is better because if done properly it will not go rancid in hot weather.  Deer tallow has a funny taste and is more waxy.  The heath reasons is because the health Nazi's for a while 'bout had lard kilt off.  Today they are backsteping and finding out "Natural" as in butter or lard is better than the junk they build with a chemestry set.   (Read vegetable shortnenin' and margerine.)

Gus Hall, post the recipes in question, I most likey can decipher them, I have made old recipes my study for years and can rewite most of them to modern terms given a day or two of study.

I'll see if I can get the instutions posted for renderin' up.

[Mogorilla]

Okay, I had to dust off an address book and make a few calls and now I recall why it says rendered beef fat for health reasons.   We made this once and used collected deer fat.  It tasted horrible and we all got sick.   Had to stay in the cabin, too sick to drive back home sick.   After that, we decided no fat except beef.   Hard to find lard anymore, unless you have a large mexican-american population around.  It is still used in much of their cooking.

[Delmonico]

Also Czech.   There ain't a store in Lincoln that don't carry it.  Deer has a higher melting point than body temp.  It will turn into a lump in yer stomach, but it makes good BP lube.

[Silver Creek Slim]

Mogorilla,
The local Super Walmart has lard. If ya got one around ya might wanna check it out.

Slim