Making Native American Pemmican

Pemmican is a food that was developed by North American Indians, the word coming from the Cree word pimîhkân, which itself is derived from the word pimî, “fat, grease” which refers to the fat that was added to the lean meat from large game, such as buffalo, elk, or moose, in order to keep it together in a cake. The meat that went into the pemmican was sliced and dried in the sun or in the smoke of a fire, then ground into powder using rocks. Often dried fruit such as berries were added to the mixture. The mixture then could provide most, if not all, of the foods and nutrients one needs to survive on long hunting expeditions or just as a mainstay food through the long winters. It was easy to carry, tucked an a leather pouch. Later it was eaten by European explorers to the New World. It was even eaten by the Arctic explorer Vihljamur Stefansson.

We have been studying Native American groups this fall and so we decided that it might be interesting to try our hand at making and eating pemmican, and I will share the recipe with you, so you can try it as well. We found that it was pretty tasty!

We debated a bit on which recipe to try, and ended up settling on a recipe that uses already prepared jerky as the meat ingredient. We did this mainly because we did not want to spend a lot of time on this activity and we had already made our own dried meat before when we studied pirates, so we did not have to duplicate that step this time. 

This recipe calls for suet. You can find food grade suet, called Recipe Ready lard in the refrigerator section of your grocery store.

Pemmican

1/2 lb Jerky 

1 Tab. Brown sugar 

1 oz (2 Tab.) Raisins 

2 oz (4 Tab.) Cranberries 

2 1/2 oz. (1/3 cup) Suet 

Run the dry jerky through a food grinder a few times (we used a blender). In a loaf pan add the cranberries, raisins and brown sugar. When the mixture is well blended, melt the suet and stir it in. Let the suet cool and harden. You can then form it into balls and enjoy!

source: Recipe Source