Pemmican Recipe: The way to Make This Nutrient-Dense Path Meals

Regardless of what fashionable fad diets and chiseled health influencers may inform you, the idea of beefing up your weight-reduction plan with extra macronutrients, or “macros,” is nothing new. If you would like proof, simply take a look at a pemmican recipe. Pemmican is basically a brick of dried meat, berries, and fats that originated with Indigenous tribes within the Plains, Nice Lakes, and Rocky Mountain areas.

Pemmican is shelf-stable and sustains shoppers with its extremely excessive protein and fats content material. The caloric recipe can also be balanced with a reasonable quantity of carbs from added fruits. These three macronutrients—protein, fats, and carbs—are essential to fueling your physique by way of a troublesome hike or hunt, however they’re additionally fairly troublesome to eat unexpectedly with out consuming a full meal. No surprise pemmican is extensively touted because the “authentic power bar.”

Let’s dive into the historical past of pemmican, easy methods to make it, and easy methods to retailer it. 

What Is Pemmican?

Pemmican is a loaf of dried floor meat and dried berries held along with congealed animal fats, generally known as “tallow.” Some pemmican cooks slice the loaf into pucks or strips, whereas others kind bite-sized balls or patties. A pound of pemmican can pack as much as 3,800 energy, in comparison with 1,152 energy in a pound of 80/20 floor beef.  

Whenever you’re attempting to maintain your stomach full within the backcountry, you in all probability fall again on just a few tried-and-true favorites: jerky, granola bars, and nut butters. This trifecta typically meets your macronutrient wants, however all of them have their very own shortcomings. Jerky’s downfall is an absence of carbohydrates and fat that stick with your bones and gasoline your motion. The downfall of the fashionable granola bar, regardless of being excessive in carbs and energy (generally from extreme quantities of added sugar) is often an absence of protein and fats. Including high-fat nut butters to the combo helps. However on the threat of claiming one thing extremely controversial, you’ll be able to solely guzzle down a lot peanut butter earlier than you’re severely sick of the stuff. It will probably additionally make a multitude and it’s not precisely allergy-friendly. 

Pemmican combines the three macronutrients right into a single supply. It joins the ranks with backpacking dinners and meal alternative bars as one of many finest survival meals, and it’s been sustaining people since lengthy earlier than the innovations of plastic, freeze-drying, and dehydrators. 

The way to Make Pemmican

Chef, meals educator, and founding father of Indigikitchen Mariah Gladstone says that to make pemmican, you’ll want:

• Dried strips of meat
• Dried berries
• Animal fats, rendered all the way down to a liquid
• Dried seasonings of your selecting
• A meals processor

1. Ensure that your meat and berries are further dry. Utilizing one of many finest dehydrators for jerky, dry meat to the purpose the place it snaps in half while you bend a chunk of it. It shouldn’t be chewy like jerky, as a result of which means it nonetheless holds some water and due to this fact may spoil simpler. Berries needs to be crunchy, too. If you happen to’re utilizing store-bought dried berries, throw them in a dehydrator for further evaporation.
2. Break up the dried meat and put it in a meals processor. Course of it till it’s a fluffy powder. Set the meat powder apart and do the identical with the berries.
3. Combine the meat, berries, and any further spices collectively in a bowl. 
4. Add rendered, liquified animal fats. The finer your meat and berry mix, the much less fats you’ll want—simply sufficient to coat the combination and make it maintain collectively. A coarser mix would require extra holding energy and, thus, extra tallow.
5. Type the pemmican earlier than the animal fats congeals. Gladstone likes to make small patties, however you can additionally press the combination right into a cake pan or a cookie sheet and lower slabs or strips. You would even pull out your cookie cutters and get artistic with sizes and shapes. 
6. If you happen to stay in a dry local weather and your pemmican is stuffed with ultra-dry meat, berries, and spices, it needs to be indefinitely shelf-stable. You’ll be able to seal it in a sandwich bag and throw it in your pantry. If you happen to stay in a extra humid space, contemplate vacuum-sealing or freezing the pemmican to maintain any of the meals contents from rehydrating and spoiling.  

As an alternative of writing an precise recipe out, Gladstone says the ratio of meat-to-berries and fat-to-meat is basically about really feel. 

“It’s constructing blocks, moderately than an precise recipe,” Gladstone says, laughing. “Some individuals will discover that extremely liberating, however some individuals will hear that and assume it’s annoying and wish an actual recipe.”

Observe together with Gladstone as she makes pemmican right here:

Pemmican Recipe Components

There are few limits to what meats, berries, spices, and animal fat you’ll be able to add to your pemmican. 

Meats

Any purple meat that doesn’t require high-temperature cooking to eradicate micro organism will work right here. Which means avoiding bear meat, poultry, and pork. If you happen to’re utilizing farmed meat, ensure to trim any fats and get the strips as lean as potential earlier than drying them.

• Beef
• Bison
• Elk
• Moose
• Pronghorn
• Venison

Berries

Any berries that may get crunchy-dry in a dehydrator will work. It is a nice use for these leftover huckleberries you’ve been saving for the fitting event.

• Blueberries
• Cherries
• Chokecherries
• Cranberries
• Huckleberries
• Serviceberries

Spices

Check out some totally different taste profiles to your pemmican. If you happen to like spicy meals, add some chili powder or purple pepper flakes. For extra savory pemmican, sage and thyme are nice. Use your favourite spice mix or seasoning salt for ease. Simply ensure the whole lot you add is dried—no contemporary herbs right here.

• Clove
• Nutmeg
• Purple pepper flakes
• Salt and pepper
• Sage
• Seasoning salts
• Spice rub blends
• Thyme

Different Components

If you wish to get actually artistic, throw another elements into your pemmican. Simply keep in mind the rule: they have to be absolutely dried and floor up for simpler sticking.

• Puffed wild rice
• Squash or pumpkin seeds
• Sunflower seeds
• Tree nuts

Animal Fat

Pemmican is a superb alternative to get artistic with totally different animal fat. As a result of rendered fats is absolutely cooked and liquified, go loopy with pork or bear fats if you happen to’d like. Conventional recipes from hunt-gather tribes used venison or elk fats, however if you happen to don’t just like the greasy really feel, change it up for one thing else. Don’t use butter or different dairy-based fat. 

• Bear fats
• Beef fats
• Bison fats
• Duck fats
• Moose fats
• Pork fats
• Venison or elk fats

The Origins of Pemmican Recipes

The phrase “pemmican” originates from the Cree phrase pimîhkân, which suggests “manufactured grease.” However opposite to fashionable perception, Gladstone says the Cree weren’t the one Indigenous tribe that made pemmican. Gladstone, who’s Blackfeet and Cherokee, says that many tribes within the Nice Plains and alongside the Rocky Mountain entrance had a reputation for pemmican in their very own languages. 

“There have been a number of French fur merchants interacting with Crees, so I’m positive the Cree phrase received picked up because the phrase for this recipe after which it grew to become universally adopted because the English terminology for it,” Gladstone says. “However there have been variations amongst all totally different tribes on the plains.”

Pemmican all the time included regionally obtainable sources of meat and berries, which meant tribes in several rising areas and landscapes had totally different recipes.

“For a lot of the plains, buffalo meat and buffalo tallow have been primarily used. However if you happen to have been in a extra woodland space, you might need simpler entry to deer meat, so that you’re drying deer meat and rendering deer fats,” Gladstone says. “If you happen to’re in an space with extra acidic soils, you might have simpler entry to blueberries. The place I’m from, we now have extra alkaline soils, and due to this fact we now have a number of serviceberries and we’ll incorporate these. Throughout the plains, chokecherries have been used, within the Nice Lakes area a number of cranberries have been used. It actually simply depends upon what you might have entry to.”

Pemmican was an necessary meals in the course of the European colonization of North America as properly. In truth, the Pemmican Battle was a skirmish that lasted from 1812 to 1821 and resulted partially, from exportation restrictions on pemmican in Canada. In some ways, pemmican fueled the fur trapping and buying and selling trade on the time.

The Advantages of Pemmican 

Probably the greatest advantages of pemmican is that you just don’t should depend on store-bought granola bars or power bars, which are sometimes ultra-processed or at the least loaded with synthetic flavors and sugar. Certain, if you happen to’re in a survival state of affairs or say, working an ultra-marathon, you’re in all probability not fearful a lot about consuming an excessive amount of sugar. However if you happen to’re relying on a snack to maintain you nourished on prolonged backcountry journeys, you’ll really feel higher if you happen to lower out sugary processed meals. (Try our information on making your personal backcountry meals). 

As a result of precisely what you’re placing into the pemmican, you can also make positive to decide on meals that agree with you. With some experimenting with quite a lot of totally different elements, you’ll finally discover a pemmican recipe that tastes finest to you and in addition retains you energized and feeling good.

Pemmican FAQ

Ultimate Ideas on Pemmican Recipes

If you happen to’re unhappy with granola bars, path combine, nut butters, and jerky, or if you wish to observe an historic meals custom that’s been sustaining people on the North American landmass for 1000’s of years, give pemmican a strive. If nothing else, you’ll be able to add one other nice recreation meat recipe to your repertoire and you’ll gasoline your physique for even the hardest out of doors excursions. 

“I don’t wish to say ‘superfood’ as a result of I really feel that time period is so generally used,” Gladstone says. “Nevertheless it’s positively one thing you could survive off of. It has all these important vitamins in a single kind.”