Dried meat

Mountain men and natives dried meat for transport and storage. I am guessing not the same as jerky. I experimented with some beef. One batch I salted, lots of salt and air dried the meat. Turned out dried and salty, crumbles rather than bends. Been drying for weeks open container, smell and tastes good. The other batch, I salted just not as much as the first batch. Then I smoked it very low then let it air dry. Hard as a rock, smells and tastes smokey. Both batches would transport well and would probably need to be reconstituted into soup or stew. So, would this be the way "they" did it??? Would they have had dried eat like this and would jerk be different as jerk is usually kind of moist.

I wonder how much salt was available long term for mountain men or natives? My guess is natives had limited access to salt in many areas.

There are salt licks in the east, Caintucky and such. And I believe there are accounts of men boiling down large kettles of salt at those licks. But there is the Great Salt Lake in Utah. I need to research that.

Salt is one of the most common minerals in the world....oceans are full of it. Natural licks were well known and utilized very early on in settled areas. Upstate NY has tons of it....literally salt pools, the reason for Syracuse area being developed in the 1600s...Saratoga, mineral spring (salt), Boones Lick in Ken Tuc ee (did I get that right?) . Salt licks were available most anywhere. Critters/ bison, elk, deer, etc. all knew of thier locations and their use of it helped the locals find them. Of course, it took effort to utilize/obtain it in useable quantities, but you could do that with as simple process as evaporation.

Was Boone and his party not ambushed at a salt spring as they boiled the water and gathered the salt.
It is also in quanity in the ledgers of parties heading west to hunt hides.

But, there is also a world wide history of drying meat and fish with just sun and wind or some smoke to keep the flies off.

blackhorse said:

Mountain men and natives dried meat for transport and storage. I am guessing not the same as jerky. I experimented with some beef. One batch I salted, lots of salt and air dried the meat. Turned out dried and salty, crumbles rather than bends. Been drying for weeks open container, smell and tastes good. The other batch, I salted just not as much as the first batch. Then I smoked it very low then let it air dry. Hard as a rock, smells and tastes smokey. Both batches would transport well and would probably need to be reconstituted into soup or stew. So, would this be the way "they" did it??? Would they have had dried eat like this and would jerk be different as jerk is usually kind of moist.

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If the meat is quickly butchered and hung on racks over a smoldering fire, you don't need salt. Salt simply retards bacteria while drying when the air temp or the humidity is too high. The technique is pretty standard around the globe. When you get down into the 40's for air temps, you can simply hang the meat. In The Faroe Islands they preserve meat and fish as they have always done for several hundred years.

Not about muzzleloading but does show antique food preservation still being done..., skip up to minute 41, goes for about 10 minutes concerning the air curing.....:
BEFRS: The Faroe Islands

LD

You don't need salt to dry meat or fish to preserve it. Salt makes it hard and brittle. I learned this from Alaska Indians.

We like to flavor our jerky but back then it was just dried
You can eat it in just dried state,or break up and boil in a stew.
Just dried and mixed with suet or tallow it makes pemmican. Moved with dried berries pemmican can be a compleat food source
Metis in Canada were making pemmican during the MM times and after and selling it to HBC by the ton, hundreds of thousand of tons. Almost 1/4 of HBC purchases in west Canada some years

So dryed meat, jerked meat becomes very hard very quickly, it's good enough food but it's not what we're usto today. It needs to be cut very thin so that it doesn't grow back bacteria from the inside out and rot , and also very thin so you're able to break it up and actually eat it otherwise it's really hard like a piece of wood trying to chew up

As far as using salt to preserve meat, if you cut you a steak an inch or so thick and however big and wide and completely submerged it in salt and can pack it in a bag or a wooden box or a tupperware, any kind of container that will keep it submerged in the salt as long as the salt is about an inch deep all the way around and none of the meat gets exposed to air, it will actually last a very long time, and you can take it out clean the salt off and grill it up and it's pretty much like a fresh piece of grilled meat even after being submerged in the salt for several weeks

Loyalist Dave said:

If the meat is quickly butchered and hung on racks over a smoldering fire, you don't need salt. Salt simply retards bacteria while drying when the air temp or the humidity is too high. The technique is pretty standard around the globe. When you get down into the 40's for air temps, you can simply hang the meat. In The Faroe Islands they preserve meat and fish as they have always done for several hundred years.

Not about muzzleloading but does show antique food preservation still being done..., skip up to minute 41, goes for about 10 minutes concerning the air curing.....:
BEFRS: The Faroe Islands

LD

Click to expand...

GOOD watch.

I am currently, nothing to do with MM, playing around making basturma, salt preserved pork(you can use beef etc.,) surround the meat with salt leaving it for 3 to 10 days. Afterword, rinse salt off and soak with changes of water dry it off and coat the piece of meat with middle eastern spices, wrap in cheese cloth and let hang for weeks or more depending on how dry you want it.