#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

2. 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

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

4. 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.

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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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

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