Science > Recipes

Pemmican - Healthy Snack and Longlife Food

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Prodigal Son:
Last week I made pemmican from a whole leg of lamb, 2450g boned by the butcher.  I used everything except for the skin.  Cutting out the fat, and the majority of the connecting tissue left me with 1231g of ‘wet’ meat.  The remaining I fried to render the fat and see what I could salvage to make pemmican, resulting in another 139g.  A total of 1370g wet meat for dehydrating.  The lamb dripping was drained off for future use and the remaining cooked meat formed the basis of lamb stew for a whole week.  Lamb is naturally fatty an there is a lot of connective tissue in the leg, which meant that it took a total of 14 hours for all of it to dry to a ‘cracking’ state.  I ended up with 379g of jerky.  This was shredded and mixed with an equal amount of beef dripping, a few herbs, and allowed to cool, to make 12 meals, each one wrapped in foil. 

Also, using Skyfarmr’s recipe for Hamburger Rocks, http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=21375.msg242524#msg242524

from 1100g of (ground) lamb mince I ended up with a similar amount of dried meat, 369g, , however only half the weight of beef dripping was used due to the different structure of the dried meat – granules v shreds – it would not distribute evenly through the structure and hold (floating to the top).  Again, it made 12 bars for hiking purposes. 

HowToBe, if you search the net you will find many different ways to make pemmican (jerky - the end of the drying part), smoke dried, dried by a lamp bulb, to name but two, as well as air-dried, that are sub-cooking temperature. 

nicklebleu:

--- Quote from: HowToBe on May 04, 2011, 07:55:33 AM ---
--- Quote from: Data on March 16, 2011, 11:00:53 AM ---Thanks for sharing! Odyssey also posted about pemmican in the "Preparedness" thread.


--- Quote from: Odyssey on January 15, 2011, 08:38:19 PM ---I found some online instructions for a cheap jerky maker. 

_http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/JerkyDrierInstructions.pdf

Also very detailed instructions on making pemmican once you dry your meat.

_http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/PEMMICAN.pdf

--- End quote ---

I've actually built this jerky drier and produced my own first batch of pemmican.

--- End quote ---
It sounds like a great thing to be able to do, and a fun project. I wonder about drying the meat at sub-cooking temperatures; I can definitely imagine how this would make the meat much more nutritious, but how risky is it, assuming one is using grass fed beef? Would it be a good idea to rub the slices with salt as a sanitation measure? What is the danger of Salmonella or E. Coli, and how healthy does a person need to be for that danger to be eliminated? Here is what I found through a quick search:


--- Quote from: http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=7529.msg154300#msg154300 ---Here’s why probiotics are so important. Normal people generally have some cancer cells, Candida yeast, E. coli, staphylococcus, strep, and any number of other potentially bad organisms you can think of in their tract most of the time. But they don’t get any disease. Researchers know, for example, that 50% of men over age 75 actually have prostate cancer, found on autopsy, but only 2% die from it. Why? The body encapsulated the cancer: limited and controlled its growth, walled it off. The discoverer of the HIV virus himself, Dr. Luc Montagnier, said that HIV alone cannot cause AIDS. (The Coming Plague) Depressed immune environment is also necessary. Same with Candida or most other bacteria; normally they’ll be held in check by sufficient friendly bacteria. E. coli is actually a probiotic when held in check by normal friendly flora. It’s only when the friendly probiotic bacteria get killed off that the potentially bad organisms get a chance to get a foothold and take over. The bad bugs are then called opportunists.
--- End quote ---
At the moment I must get to bed. I appreciate help with this issue, as I really would like to try this project if I can determine that it is safe.

--- End quote ---

I prepare the meat to dry with a paste containing the following:
- Sea salt  (cures the meat and wards off bacteria, so needs a substantial amount)
- Honey (a little bit, also antibacterial)
- Crushed garlic
- Turmeric
- Chilli flakes or powder (Cayenne pepper)
- Mustard powder
- Paprika
- other spices to your liking
- either lemon juice  or apple cider to give it a bit of a tangy taste

I then dry this in the oven at approx.  45 - 50 deg C, which takes a bit less than 24 h until they are fairly dry. I tend to dry them more than the jerky beef that is commercially available, which might increase shelf life. Then I vacuum-pack that into smaller portions ... et voila!

In my opinion this shouldn't pose a problem with bacterial contamination, but again, I think it is crucial  not to go too easy on the salt.
Anyway, that's just the way I do it ...

As to the E. coli ... there are different subtypes of E. coli, some are beneficial, some are  unhealthy and some are nasty. So by just stating "E. coli" one doesn't really know what's going on.

HowToBe:

--- Quote from: nicklebleu ---As to the E. coli ... there are different subtypes of E. coli, some are beneficial, some are  unhealthy and some are nasty. So by just stating "E. coli" one doesn't really know what's going on.
--- End quote ---
Ah, I was wondering about that.

I suppose beef brisket might produce some pretty tough jerky, because of the connective tissue, but maybe I'll try it. Thanks folks!

[EDIT: A quick search tells me that plenty of people make jerky from brisket. Alright!]

Laurentien:
 I did my first pemmican today. Yesterday was rendering the fat, which I did outside on my camping stove because of the smell, got about 3 liter from five kilo of of suet. Today, I dried the meat and mixed and equal part of dried meat (300gr.) with fat, 50 gr. of dried blueberry and 50 gr. of dried almond floor that I made previously. I did add a teaspoon of salt and tablespoon of maple syrup for the taste and the result is not bad.

 As a first try, I'm satisfy but will continue to improve the recipe as it 's a bit fad but he! it is not supposed to taste great anyway. My jerky is delicious and all the family snack on it but as we need to had more fat to the diet pemmican was the way to go.

Data:
I made a larger batch of pemmican this week and another batch is currently in preparation.

I bought 2kg lean organic beef from the butcher. I put the meat into the freezer. When half frozen it's easier to cut it into strips. I built a dryer out of a conventional, medium sized carton and made small holes at the top. Heating elements are 3 x 60W candescent lightbulbs. The warm air is rising out of the carton and there's good circulation. The meat strips are lying on perforated plastic plates. After 48 hours at 35°C the meat strips were so dry that they snapped when bent. I've pulverized the dried meat strips in a robust blender (which also is suitable for crushing ice). I used ghee for the pemmican, since I didn't have access to beef tallow. It's nowhere to be found because apparently people aren't buying it. I added as much ghee as the meat could hold. I've added salt until I liked the taste. To sterilize it I've filled the pemmican in several sealed glass jars and kept it for 1h at 100°C. Now it should indeed keep for several years.

Because the lean organic meat was rather expensive (15 Euros a kilo currently), I've bought the cheapest part of the cow yesterday. It's from the ribs; still organic, for 5 Euros a kilo. There is a lot of fat (tallow) around the meat. This is drying right now and I'm going to see if it works out.

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