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Regardless of what fashionable fad diets and chiseled health influencers would possibly inform you, the idea of beefing up your weight loss program with extra macronutrients, or “macros,” is nothing new. If you need proof, simply take a look at pemmican, 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 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 means of a tough hike or hunt, however they’re additionally fairly tough to devour with out consuming a full meal. No marvel pemmican is extensively touted because the “unique power bar.”

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

What Is Pemmican?

You’ll be able to slice pemmican into bars, form it into patties, and even kind it with cookie cutters. Indigikitchen, Mariah Gladstone / YouTube

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 making an attempt 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 follow your bones and gas your motion. The downfall of the trendy granola bar, regardless of being excessive in carbs and energy (generally from extreme quantities of added sugar) is often a scarcity of protein and fats. Including high-fat nut butters to the combo helps. However on the danger of claiming one thing extremely controversial, you may solely guzzle down a lot peanut butter earlier than you’re critically sick of the stuff. It could additionally make a large number 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. 

Make Pemmican

Dehydrated purple meat is a key ingredient in pemmican. Jiri Hera / Adobe Inventory

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

Be sure that your meat and berries are additional dry. Utilizing one of many finest dehydrators for jerky, dry meat to the purpose the place it snaps in half if you bend a chunk of it. It shouldn’t be chewy like jerky, as a result of meaning it nonetheless holds some water and subsequently may spoil simpler. Berries needs to be crunchy, too. For those who’re utilizing store-bought dried berries, throw them in a dehydrator for additional evaporation.
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.
Combine the meat, berries, and any extra spices collectively in a bowl. 
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.
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 lower slabs or strips. You might even pull out your cookie cutters and get artistic with sizes and styles. 
For those who dwell 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. For those who dwell in a extra humid space, contemplate 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 basically about really feel. 

“It’s constructing blocks, slightly than an precise recipe,” Gladstone says, laughing. “Some folks will discover that extremely liberating, however some folks will hear that and assume it’s demanding and wish a precise recipe.”

Observe together with Gladstone as she makes pemmican right here:

What Elements Can You Use in Pemmican?

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

Meats

Any purple meat that doesn’t require high-temperature cooking to remove micro organism will work right here. Which means avoiding bear meat, poultry, and pork. For those who’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

Huckleberries add candy, tart taste to pemmican. Gifford Pinchot Nationwide Forest / Flickr

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 appropriate event.

Blueberries
Cherries
Chokecherries
Cranberries
Huckleberries
Serviceberries

Spices

Check out some totally different taste profiles on your pemmican. For those who 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 be sure every little thing 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

Sunflower seeds make a terrific extra ingredient to jazz up a pemmican recipe. yuliiaholovchenko / Adobe Inventory

If you wish to get actually artistic, throw another elements into your pemmican. Simply keep in mind the rule: they have to 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 good 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, 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

The phrase “pemmican” originates from the Cree phrase pimîhkân, which suggests “manufactured grease.” However opposite to common 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 whole lot of French fur merchants interacting with Crees, so I’m positive the Cree phrase bought 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 all the time included regionally accessible 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. “For those who’re in an space with extra acidic soils, you’ve gotten simpler entry to blueberries. The place I’m from, we’ve got extra alkaline soils, and subsequently we’ve got a whole lot of serviceberries and we’ll incorporate these. Throughout the plains, chokecherries have been used, within the Nice Lakes area a whole lot of cranberries have been used. It actually simply relies on what you’ve gotten entry to.”

Pemmican FAQ

Remaining Ideas on Pemmican

Pemmican turned a preferred good within the fur commerce and different markets within the 18th and nineteenth centuries. Auckland Museum / Wikimedia Commons

For those who’re unhappy with granola bars, path combine, nut butters, and jerky, or if you wish to observe an historical meals custom that’s been sustaining people on the North American landmass for hundreds of years, give pemmican a attempt. If nothing else, you may add one other nice sport meat recipe to your repertoire and you’ll gas your physique for even the hardest outside 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 which you can survive off of. It has all these important vitamins in a single kind.”