#Pemmican

Ingredients Beef, sliced thin for easy drying 1.2kg Tallow (made from suet) 1.2kg

Equipment

  • A method of making thin slices of meat - My butcher cut mine up
  • A dehydrator. I have had success with a cheap round one, and an expensive box one. The key is ability to hold a temperature. I prefer commercial driers over home made as they provide a reasonably sanitary environment. Higher temperature = faster drying, but higher temperature = less vitamin C
  • A method of making the meat into tiny pieces. I used a food processor. Feed it slowly, meat is harder than most of the stuff it cuts
  • A method of melting sufficient tallow. My dehydrator holds just over a kilo of meat, which means just over a kilo of tallow. I used a glass mixing bowl
  • A large enough mixing bowl to mix in - mine pictured below is an enormous steel salad bowl 34cm across
  • Something to mold the pemmican in, I use a large casserole dish lined with grease proof paper

Method

  1. Dry the meat. This can take a while. I’d love to know how hot I could take this without destroying too much vitamin C. I ran it at 30 degrees C

Thin slices of fresh silverside beef hanging in a biltong box dehydrator set to 25°C. The temperature was later increased to 30°

  1. Wait. I waited a week. Maybe 4 days would have been enough. The dryness you’re looking for is where the meat cracks instead of bending

A hand demonstrating meat being so dry it cracks rather than bends

  1. Weigh your mixing bowl. This is a slow process and scales tend to turn off part way through.

  2. Blend the meat to powder. I used a food processor, with about a third of a slice being fed at time, emptying it into the mixing bowl after every 300 grams or so.

Dry meat blended fine. The little bit of fat in the meat makes it sticky

  1. Weigh your blended meat. Weigh out the same amount of tallow

Blocks of tallow in a glass bowl

  1. Melt the tallow at as low a temperature as you can. That’s about 50°C. I used the microwave for this as I didn’t want to dirty my double boiler. I ran it 1 minute at a time for about 3 minutes, stirring and measuring the temperature each time. Tallow melts at about 50°C

A glass bowl with melted tallow in it. A thermometer to the side reads 50°C

  1. Combine. This works just like making cake batter. Make a well in the mound of blended meat, pour in the tallow. Mix with hands or wooden spoon until all the meat is saturated.

  2. Mold it. I line a container with grease proof paper. I haven’t tried a teflon lined container, though that could release the pemmican easily. Press the pemmican into the mold, I use a steel spatula to flatten the top.

Pemmican in the mold

  1. Let it cool. In the fridge or on the bench. Before it goes hard, but after it has set a bit, cut it into portions. I cut mine into 16 pieces averaging 140g each.

Package it in glass, paper, or foil. I used foil and packaged each two together

A rectangular prism of pemmican with added salt, unwrapped from its foil wrapping, in front of a wrapped piece

  1. Clean up. As the cook you get to eat the pemmican left in the mixing bowl

A spoon in a mixing bowl. The spoon scraped up pemmican that was left behind when the mold was filled

  • jet@hackertalks.comMEnglish
    11·
    29 days ago

    This is a great writeup! Thank you for sharing!

    I ran it at 30 degrees C

    I think thats on the low side, I run at 50C after i read

    It is important that the lean meat used in pemmican be dehydrated at a temperature below 120 def F., and a temperature between 100 deg F. and 115 deg F. is ideal. Temperatures above 120 deg F. will “cook” the meat and will severely compromise the nutritional value of the pemmican. Federal and State laws require commercial dried meat products like jerky to be raised to a temperature above 150 deg F. which cooks the meat to a well-done state and makes it totally unsuitable for making pemmican.

    http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/PEMMICAN.pdf - but it doesnt cite its sources, so IDK

    Sorry no photo of the completely finished product - it’s boring foil rectangles

    Your finished product, is it dry and strong to the touch? or soft and a bit gummy?

    How did it taste?

    What about your spices? salt? Did you settle on a recipe you like?

    • psud@aussie.zoneOPMEnglish
      2·
      28 days ago

      I added a final product picture. The pictured one has added salt as yesterday included a fair bit of booze which increases my need for salt

    • psud@aussie.zoneOPMEnglish
      2·
      28 days ago

      Thanks for the temperature advice. I’m running the rest of the silverside meat at 40°C (Google translates your 110 to115°F range to 37.7° to 46°C)

    • psud@aussie.zoneOPMEnglish
      2·
      17 days ago

      No spices, no salt, the ingredient list is complete: beef (fresh silverside) and tallow made from suet

      Is was hard and tastes perfect

      I might add salt to some batches in future

      • jet@hackertalks.comMEnglish
        21·
        29 days ago

        i had one of my non-carnivore friends try my pemmican. they were not a fan of the oily texture