Pemmican Recipe: How to Make This Nutrient-Dense Trail Food

Regardless of what fashionable fad diets and chiseled health influencers would possibly inform you, the idea of beefing up your eating regimen with extra macronutrients, or “macros,” is nothing new. If you would like proof, simply have a look at a pemmican recipe. Pemmican is actually 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 customers 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 via a troublesome hike or hunt, however they’re additionally fairly troublesome to devour all of sudden with out consuming a full meal. No marvel pemmican is broadly touted because the “unique power bar.”

Let’s dive into the historical past of pemmican, the way to make it, and the way 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 ground beef.  

While you’re making an attempt to maintain your stomach full within the backcountry, you most likely 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 keep on with your bones and gas 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 danger of claiming one thing extremely controversial, you possibly can solely guzzle down a lot peanut butter earlier than you’re severely sick of the stuff. It may possibly 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 best survival foods, and it’s been sustaining people since lengthy earlier than the innovations of plastic, freeze-drying, and dehydrators. 

How one can 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 right down to a liquid
• Dried seasonings of your selecting
• A meals processor

1. Be certain that your meat and berries are further dry. Utilizing one of many best dehydrators for jerky, dry meat to the purpose the place it snaps in half once you bend a chunk of it. It shouldn’t be chewy like jerky, as a result of meaning it nonetheless holds some water and due to this fact may spoil simpler. Berries ought to be crunchy, too. In the event you’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 extra 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. Kind the pemmican earlier than the animal fats congeals. Gladstone likes to make small patties, however you may additionally press the combination right into a cake pan or a cookie sheet and minimize slabs or strips. You would even pull out your cookie cutters and get artistic with sizes and styles. 
6. In the event you reside in a dry local weather and your pemmican is stuffed with ultra-dry meat, berries, and spices, it ought to be indefinitely shelf-stable. You’ll be able to seal it in a sandwich bag and throw it in your pantry. In the event you reside in a extra humid space, think about vacuum-sealing or freezing the pemmican to maintain any of the meals contents from rehydrating and spoiling.  

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

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

Comply with together with Gladstone as she makes pemmican right here:

Pemmican Recipe Substances

There are few limits to what meats, berries, spices, and animal fat you possibly can add to your pemmican. 

Meats

Any crimson meat that doesn’t require high-temperature cooking to get rid of micro organism will work right here. Meaning avoiding bear meat, poultry, and pork. In the event you’re utilizing farmed meat, be sure to trim any fats and get the strips as lean as attainable 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 suitable event.

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

Spices

Check out some totally different taste profiles on your pemmican. In the event you like spicy meals, add some chili powder or crimson pepper flakes. For extra savory pemmican, sage and thyme are nice. Use your favourite spice mix or seasoning salt for ease. Simply be sure every part you add is dried—no contemporary herbs right here.

• Clove
• Nutmeg
• Crimson 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 bear in mind the rule: they should be totally 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 totally 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, swap it up for one thing else. Don’t use butter or different dairy-based fat. 

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

The Origins of Pemmican Recipes

The phrase “pemmican” originates from the Cree phrase pimîhkân, which implies “manufactured grease.” However opposite to in style 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 numerous 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 turned universally adopted because the English terminology for it,” Gladstone says. “However there have been variations amongst all totally different tribes on the plains.”

Pemmican at all times included regionally obtainable sources of meat and berries, which meant tribes in numerous 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. “In the event you’re in an space with extra acidic soils, you have got simpler entry to blueberries. The place I’m from, we have now extra alkaline soils, and due to this fact we have now numerous serviceberries and we’ll incorporate these. Throughout the plains, chokecherries have been used, within the Nice Lakes area numerous cranberries have been used. It actually simply will depend on what you have got entry to.”

Pemmican was an necessary meals through the European colonization of North America as properly. In reality, the Pemmican War 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 

Among the best advantages of pemmican is that you just don’t need to depend on store-bought granola bars or power bars, which are sometimes ultra-processed or at least loaded with artificial flavors and sugar. Certain, if you happen to’re in a survival state of affairs or say, working an ultra-marathon, you’re most likely not anxious 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 minimize out sugary processed meals. (Take a look at our information on making your own 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 a wide range of totally different elements, you’ll ultimately discover a pemmican recipe that tastes greatest to you and in addition retains you energized and feeling good.

Pemmican FAQ

Remaining Ideas on Pemmican Recipes

In the event you’re unhappy with granola bars, path combine, nut butters, and jerky, or if you wish to follow 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 possibly can add one other nice sport meat recipe to your repertoire and you’ll gas 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. “However it’s positively one thing that you would be able to survive off of. It has all these important vitamins in a single kind.”