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Nutritional Comments: Pemmican is made from jerky which is dehydrated meat. I recommend making jerky from grassfed beef, buffalo or wild deer meat. Jerky is an excellent source of protein, and essential vitamins and minerals that include iron, zinc, phosphorous, and vitamin B-12. It is an essential superfood for your survival foods list.
The meat should be as lean as possible, and if you don’t own your own meat cutter/slicer to get thin slices, you can have your butcher cut it in 1-2 inch wide strips for you. Please note: Dried meat is generally made in large batches. After it’s dehydrated you have 2 options, (1) store it in a 100% organic cotton pillow case or (2) use an electric sealer. This FoodSaver GameSaver has come highly recommended. At this point you are ready to make pemmican.
A great visual for making jerky and the drying process can be seen in my DVD and Booklet: Cook Your Way to Wellness: Cooking Class DVD and Booklet.
—Adapted from Tactical Intelligence.
Ingredients
- 4 cups lean dehydrated meat, as noted above (grind to powder consistency)
- 2 cups rendered tallow
- 3 cups dried fruit berries (cranberries add vitamin C)
Instructions
- Spread meat out very thin on a cookie sheet and dry at 180°F for at least 8 hours, or until sinewy and crispy. Pound it to a nearly powder consistency using a blender or other tool. Grind the dried fruit, leaving it a little bit lumpy for texture.
- Heat rendered fat* on stove at medium until it liquefies, but do not overheat. Add liquid fat to dried meat and dried fruit.
- Mix ingredients by hand. Form into patties or square bars. Let cool, then wrap patties or bars in unbleached wax paper. Pemmican keeps well and can be consumed for several years.
*If you choose to render your own suet to make tallow, you can go here to see the whole process. https://www.seleneriverpress.com/render-your-own-nutrient-dense-beef-tallow/
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I made pemmican from grass fed beef and tallow. I weighed a sample of the beef to determine when continued drying had no decrease in weight. I have to restrict carbs so I didn’t add any fruit. Initially I was looking for an alternative to trail mix.
In use, I found the pemmican to be very bland and it required a fair amount of salt to be palatable. It’s a good fuel when other food sources are not available, but traditional unsweetened pemmican will never be a dietary staple under normal conditions.
I have made pemmican using equal amounts of dried beef to tallow. I prefer recipes that use weight. It makes it easier to know of you are using the correct ratios.
Hi Mike:
Thanks for commenting. Like any food, our taste buds react very differently for each one of us. I make this recipe and even without the fruit, I love the taste, and have plenty on hand for snacks as well as emergencies. If you have any suggestions as to how to improve the recipe, please do share.
Maria Atwood
Colorado Springs South
http://www.traditionalcook.com
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Thank you for this article ! !
I am sure this was a very nutritious and satisfying food. And i believe the quality of tallow or fat used makes a difference in taste. Is that true?
Would they have used the organ fats from inside the animal for this use ? I have read that this fat is different in nutrition and totally different in composition from the fat on the muscles and hide.
The difference between what is known as tallow and suit. Please elaborate if you know of this.
And would they have used herbs also or honey or other things to sweeten the taste or for nutrition. I can only imagine they may have used many things to make it not only nutritious, but more tasty.Thanks again, this article is very helpful and edifying !
brian pratt
Hi Brian:
Glad you enjoyed the recipe. It was not one of my own, it came as noted above from “Tactical Intelligence” – I make my own beef jerky and show how to do it on my DVD, “Cook Your Way To Wellness, available on Amazon. I don’t think that the fat (Suet) I used comes from organs. The fat I use to render and render to get my tallow from is shown on my blog post at https://www.seleneriverpress.com/render-your-own-nutrient-dense-beef-tallow/
My grandmother who was Paiute Indian never put anything in the raw meat used to make her jerky except mineral salt and sometimes she would grind up dried red chili flakes and sprinkled it on the raw meat along with the salt, but never added other things to it. I don’t ever recall her using any herbs or even cranberries and for sure never any sweeteners. Dehydrated fruits was possibly something they ate on its own.
It’s a food that you would possibly need to get used to eating, its more for survival or eating as a healthy salty snack like potato chips. Its not meant to be sweet. The nutrition level is very high and I go into that in my blog post linked noted in the first paragraph. Some people marinade it in sauces like Tamari or other stuff but I just eat it plain. Hope this helps.
Maria, Thank you !
Thank you for clearing this up for me and us ! It is wonderful to know of the actual and real ways they did made this food and not imagine further but simply use it as they did. I truly appreciate your nice response and for making this truth known what they actually put in the pemmican and for how it was used and how it was to taste. I love that your grandmom shared this with you, and you with us, what a huge blessing! I shall look further into your writings, im new at this so far, and just discovered you and this all through the Weston Price foundation, so Thanks again, brian Pratt from Michigan
Dear Maria,
You are such a blessing to me. Im deeply thankful to have found you! (and others too) ,through the Weston Price site. Thank you again.
Thank you. For food storage purposes, if I was to use beef, tallow and salt. How long would it last at room temp or in a cold storage? Wouldn’t the tallow go rancid?