Pemmican Recipe: How To Make It Like The Pioneers Did | The Survival Journal (2024)

FAQs

How did pioneers make pemmican? ›

During the fur trade, pemmican was most often made by killing the buffalo, jerking the meat, making hair-out bags from its hide, and rendering tallow from the animal's marrow, suet, or fat. The dried meat was then broken up by pounding.

Made properly, pemmican would last indefinitely and could sustain an individual for months. Our modern-day version consists of a blend of bison, beef, berries, and other natural ingredients.

To make pemmican, Native Americans ground dried meat into powder and mixed it with rendered animal fat and bone marrow. Occasionally, dried berries like Saskatoon berries and cranberries were added. The natives packed the pemmican tightly into bags made of bison hide for use when hunting or traveling.

The Red River Colony imposed on that economic order and, when famine threatened the settlement in mid-winter 1814, Governor Miles Macdonnell (1767-1828) issued what became known as the Pemmican Proclamation. This law was meant to stop the export of pemmican to NWC forts in the West and retain it for the HBC settlers.

I have made pemmican several times. I currently have some in the fridge that is roughly seven years old and is still good due to it being extremely difficult for bacteria to get into and being sealed in an airtight container in a fridge.

At room temperature, pemmican can generally last from one to five years, but there are anecdotal stories of pemmican stored in cool cellars being safely consumed after a decade or more.

Suet is the fat around the kidneys of the cow and works best for pemmican because it stays hard at room temperature and will help to preserve your meat. Stay away from lard or any nut oils as they will tend to go rancid faster.

Add salt at a rate of 1.5-1.9% of the total weight of your powders used. For the original recipe, your mix will only be meat/salt. For a dried fruit mix, start with 30% dried fruit and 70% meat powder. Increase sweetness to taste by increasing the fruit powder or by adding honey.

What food is similar to pemmican? ›

Both pemmican and jerky are high in protein, making them excellent choices for a nutritious snack. Pemmican, with its combination of dried meat and fat, provides a calorie-dense option.

40 day winter: 12800 pemmican. 50 day winter: 16000 pemmican. These are near-minimums, though, and you should shoot for higher. (I say near because a colonist can survive for five days without food.)

Is pemmican good for you? When made with grass-fed meat, tallow, and other fresh ingredients, yes! Because pemmican has high concentrations of lean meat and fat, it is considered a high-calorie, high-protein, and high-fat snack. When it isn't combined with fruit, pemmican is essentially no-carb.

Health Benefits and Nutritional Value

Given that pemmican is made with lean meats and fat, it is certainly a high-calorie, high-protein, and high-fat food, and if it isn't combined with dried fruits, pemmican is essentially no-carb as well.

Pemmican Originates from Northern Tribes

The Ojibway, Cree and the Algonquian-speaking tribes call it Pimikan, meaning “manufactured grease.” The Lakota (Sioux) called it wasna ('wa' meaning “anything” and 'sna' meaning “ground up”). Pemmican could be made of virtually any lean, dried protein, including fish.

Burial was a common preservation technique. Meat is buried under hot coals. The lack of light, reduced oxygen, and heat from the coals kills harmful microorganisms, thus preserving the meat for consumption in later months. In addition, burying fresh eggs in sand or under layers of straw was a common practice.

Most early settlers used a smokehouse, hanging hams and other large pieces of meat in a small building to cure through several weeks of exposure to a low fire with a lot of smoke. The process began around November. The meat would keep all winter and most of the summer.

Traditionally, jerky was made using the sun, wind and smoke from fires to preserve and extend the shelf life of meat. Drying and smoking results in meat products that have a long storage life, allowing for the preservation of large amounts of meat that could be stored and consumed later.

Their Quechan word “ch'arki” meant “dried meat” or “burning meat.” As you can guess by the meaning of the word, their jerky was made by cutting meat into thin strips, salting them, and smoking them dry over a hot fire.