Pemmican

[Black Hand]

It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum before expanding into the settlement of the Americas sometime after 16,500 years ago during the Late Glacial Maximum as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted,[5][6][7][8][9] but before the bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 years Before Present.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia



A warming trend began slowley shrinking North America's ice sheets some 19,000 years ago, gradually creating two passable routes to the south and opening the possibility of multiple early migrations. According to several studies conducted over the past decade on the geographic distribution of genetic diversity in modern indigenous Americans, the earliest of these migrants started colonizing the New World between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago -- a date that fits well with emerging archaeological evident of pre-Clovis colonists. https://ows.edb.utexas.edu/site/hight-kreitman/land-bridge-theory

 

[Claude Mathis]

Whenever I get around to making some pemmican, I am going to use store bought fruit and nut trail mix, store bought jerky and probably some butter instead of animal fat.

Mixing just anything together and calling it "pemmican" doesn't work for me. But hey, what's in a name, right?
:wink:

 

[Black Hand]

Whenever I get around to making some pemmican, I am going to use store bought fruit and nut trail mix, store bought jerky and probably some butter instead of animal fat.

Mixing just anything together and calling it "pemmican" doesn't work for me. But hey, what's in a name, right?
:wink:

Store-bought jerky and fruit/nut mixes are also a bad idea - full of salt, sugar and extraneous flavorings. Great to eat out of hand, a terrible choice for pemmican.

With dried meat and marrowfat so easy and inexpensive to make, I don't understand why you would use anything else?

 

[zimmerstutzen]

There are some major similarities of methods of daily living among most people. Primitive or modern. Every body eats. Most every one has the same cravings and tastes food the same. They need food, shelter and clothes. That methods were copied or spread otherwise is not surprising. Nor would it be surprising that two separated cultures would develop some of the same methods despite being continents apart. I believe anthropologists say discovered independently. Folks need a cutting edge. any busted rock will cut. Soon it is learned that some rocks cut better than others, and then that some rocks can be shaped into better cutting tools. Then that metals can be formed into cutting edges. Our North American peoples were just turning the corner of metal working as European contact came in earnest. Latin American natives were a bit further advanced. How long it would have taken to actually make bronze cutting tools, etc may have been centuries a or a millenium. But I do not think knowledge of metal working came across the land bridge. Was the knowledge acquired through later contact but before Columbus? don't know.

South American Natives discovered freeze drying food long before europeans.

 

[Black Hand]

Prior to Columbus, there little metal-working of note in the Americas besides soft metals such as silver and gold with low melting points. Some native copper was used, but no brass, bronze or iron as were used in the Bronze and Iron ages in Europe.

More information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America http://www.banrepcultural.org/gold...hispanic-metallurgy/a-history-of-metalworking http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/h-carnegie-steel.htm

 

[Bo T]

That puts their metal working at the @ level as Otzi.

 

[Black Hand]

https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections/anthropology/online-collections-research/old-copper-culture http://scienceviews.com/squier/aboriginalmonumentsA-13.html
http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/mesoamerican-copper-industry-of-connections

 

[kansas_volunteer]

I don't see how dried berries would cause anything to go bad. Service berries are easy to dry.

Dried berries are rich in sugar and contain residual moisture - bacteria & fungi (in which dried berries are covered) grow well in moist, sugar-containing environments. Fats and proteins require more specialized enzymes to break them down, while sugar is readily metabolized by (nearly all) bacteria & fungi..

I don't see how dried berries could retain more residual moisture than dried meat prepared in the same environment. My question is how much moisture is within meat and berries before drying? How much weight is lost in the drying Process? What is the percentage loss? Are dried berries actually wetter than dried meat.

For modern pemmican makers both dried meat and dried berries could be heated to 185 degrees or so and any residual micro beasts could be killed before being mixed with fat. I dont mean cooking the berries but in raising the heat after the ingedients are already dried by the usual processes. I see no reason to fret about what berries might do to us today.

For those drying meat to be pulverized into pemmican Google hamburger rocks. Starting with rocks you could probably do the pulverizing in a blender. Same with dried berries.making rocks reducers fat content, but as fat is added back that should not be an issue. I suspect ancient people's probably did not try to dry fatty meat anyway.

To me when we say meat and berries are pulverized we are saying we are using a process of reducing to powder. Pemmican ingredients probably ought to be about like sand when finished. You decide the meaning of sand for yourself.

Ancient groups probably did concurrently develop food preservation methods or shared or captured them. Consider in North America we have jerky and in South Africa they have biltong. By whatever name dried meat has ancient origens. By jerky I mean the old time kind, not the modern. Same with biltong.

 

[Billnpatti]

Store-bought jerky and fruit/nut mixes are also a bad idea - full of salt, sugar and extraneous flavorings. Great to eat out of hand, a terrible choice for pemmican.

With dried meat and marrowfat so easy and inexpensive to make, I don't understand why you would use anything else?

What can I say???? :idunno: I'm a rebel. :haha:

 

[Black Hand]

Do as you wish - I hope it doesn't end unfavorably. I fear you may find it unpalatable and even potentially dangerous to eat...

 

[Bo T]

But, as insinuated, not a long term survival food. While, the meat and fat pemmican, sealed in rawhide, and stored in the ground, will keep for decades.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Yep as I said they were just in the first rudimentary stages of metal working. Their was some copper work among the NW coastal peoples. Others in Central America had become adept at working gold and silver. I don't know that eastern woodland Indians had any such knowledge. There were stories of an Indian copper mine on top a mountain near Swatara Gap in PA. And some suspect that the Indians knew of the gold mine north of Harrisburg, which after white contact was called Hanson's Treasure. And was referenced in the Book, "A light in the Forest." (The author used local history and geographical names in the book.) There were several small silver, gold, tin and copper mines scattered through this area in Colonial times. Whether the locations were learned from the natives or discovered by whites maybe lost in time.

 

[Black Hand]

But, as insinuated, not a long term survival food.

The winters on the Western Plains were very long and cold, especially since the tribes living there (that didn't farm like the Mandans) were subsistence hunters. Game was scarce or non-existent for extended periods of time and stores of dried meat, berries, roots and pemmican were most likely eaten. As it was a concentrated source of nutrients, it also served as travel rations when there was no time to hunt/gather.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaboo http://frenchinwisconsin.com/2013/05/voyage-en-canot/

 

[Black Hand]

Perhaps we should explore the Pre-Colombian metalwork aspect of history in another thread....

I am interested it the experience of others with pemmican. I saw it made in a traditional way in October of 2016. The dried meat was pounded/shredded (rock & stump, was NOT reduced to a powder) and mixed with marrowfat rendered on site from leg bones. When mixed, resembled chocolate-covered shredded coconut - not a uniform brown paste as some have imagined. It would make a tasty stew if mixed with something starchy (corn, rice, wild rice, cornmeal or hominy) and dried vegetables. I've made many a stew with dried meat, and it remains a little chewy, but not in an unpleasant manner.

At one time, I made jerky at home that was marinaded in a complex sauce of Soy Sauce, sugar, honey, spices and black/red pepper. Excellent to eat but made a poor stew - too sweet and tasted strange because of all the additions. I've since gone to drying meat that has been sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and red pepper flake. I do occasionally use a bottle of liquid smoke in an overnight treatment of the sliced meat (before seasoning) which gives the meat a hint of smoke (as I don't have a spot to set up a rack and dry meat over a small fire). The meat is dried in the oven set to its lowest temperature and the door propped open, the strips of meat (cut WITH the grain, never across) hanging between the wires so the heat can circulate all around the strips. The meat dries in 6-8 hours to a flexible/leathery texture. Tasty to eat and makes an excellent stew.

 

[Kansas Jake]

Blackhand, we frequently make jerky at home using either venison or beef. If venison isn't available as was the case this year, we wait until the local grocery does loss leader sales on beef roast and buy two or three at hamburger or less price. My wife usually does the seasoning and has a recipe she has stored in her head. It involves a marinade with liquid smoke and soy sauce overnight on the sliced meat. Then she lays the meat out on our dehydrator trays and sprinkles a mix of spices on the meat. We then dehydrate it in a dehydrator which is an old Excaliber that we have had for 30+ years. The nice thing is one can adjust the flavor from spicy to mild to suit ones tastes or use.

 

[Black Hand]

I tend to use a beef round roast (top, bottom or eye) and save the smaller pieces of venison/elk (that might be used for jerky) for use in Tacos Al Pastor or meat for stew (the even smaller trimmings are ground). I have a category labeled "Meat" in my freezer that could be put on a stick or cut into smaller pieces for other applications. I find leaving the pieces whole gives me options.

I do like seasoned jerky and am quite fond of the savory jerky sold in stores. However, I am discouraged by the exorbitant price and prefer to make my own. Since I use my jerky almost exclusively for historical events, my compromise is to use the recipe I posted previously. For truly traditional jerky, I should omit the salt & pepper entirely, but having a little seasoning enhances the flavor of the meat. As it is eaten out of hand or added to a savory stew, the salt & pepper aren't an issue.

 

[crockett]

Well....couple of things. I never thought there was just one recipe for pemmican. I've heard of seal meat/jerky being used in one area. So, depending on the area- any sort of dried meat/jerky. It seems that regardless of the type of meat it was pounded into fibrous shreds. This was then mixed with rendered fat in a 50/50 mix. Dried berries were often added. Although berries shortened the shelf life- I don't know whether it was because the berries attracted moisture or had acids in them, etc.
I usually "jerk" beef in a drier so I don't get the smoky taste of doing it the traditional way- that obvious influences the taste. I never add dried berries because it is one more step or some other reason- I ought to at least try it.
On keeping it in skin/parchment/rawhide bags- I don't know how that adds to shelf life.
Recipes that add a lot of spices, etc.- I was led to believe that these things might attract moisture and shorten shelf life.
In the Canadian North, colder temperatures might have allowed more berries, etc. to be used and not effect shelf life. Pemmican may have been more common in Canada, I haven't read that much about it in mountain man writings- a little but maybe less common.

 

[Rifleman1776]

I have never made pemmican but have read of it's use 'back in the day' many times. Interestingly, at one time, our modern Navy set out to develop a survival food. After spending years, and much money as the Government often does, it 'invented' pemmican. :shocked2: :rotf:
I do like to make jerky. My technique is simple. Cut into thin strips, usually across the grain, marinade in formula of the day. (straight teriyaki sauce is very good but I make others to suit my taste) I hand in oven with toothpicks at about 200 to 225 degrees until it looks right. Some of it actually gets packaged for use at a later date after I 'sample' it. :wink:
BTW, I have also read that fruitcake was used as a survival food because it is also concentrated energy and vitamin rich with the fruits.

 

[Billnpatti]

Do as you wish - I hope it doesn't end unfavorably. I fear you may find it unpalatable and even potentially dangerous to eat...

If you see my posts not appearing any longer it could be because you were right. :haha:

 

[Black Hand]

I hope there are no ill effects. I can imagine the flavor and texture of the final product you would get and they were not appealing.

I did find some modern Pemmican recipes containing butter, but they sounded terrible....