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Sweet Pemmican
3 PARTS DRIED BEEF VENISON OR BUFFALO 2 PARTS FAT OF BOILED MARROW BONES This is called sweet because of the extra amount of rich, fine fat, obtained by cracking marrow bones of beef, deer or buffalo, boiling them in water, skimming off the hot grease and mixing that with the dried meat in twice the proportion used in plain pemmican. This rich or "sweet" pemmican is more likely to taste of salt, rather than of sugar , depending on the way the meat was dried.
You can make your pemmican of real buffalo meat nowadays, if you like, because some of the government's bison , if you like, because some of the government's bison. herds are being legally butchered off and sold in shops, on rare occasions.
Pemmican made from deer meat is just the thing to try your hand at on your next hunting trip. Take home a few hand at on your next hunting trip. Take home a few skins of the bears you shoot, filled with venison pemmican to surprise the wife and neighbors-but remember to sew up the bullet holes or it'll leak out on the way home.
A two-ingredient preserve: dried lean meat pounded fine and bound with fat, here in a richer ratio than usual. The proportions are by volume of prepared ingredients, and everything depends on how thoroughly the meat was dried in the first place.
- The hinge: the meat must be bone-dryPemmican keeps only because there is no water left in it. The meat should snap rather than bend when broken, and should be pounded or ground to a coarse powder before the fat goes in. Meat dried only to a leathery, flexible jerky stage will spoil inside the fat rather than be preserved by it.
- Drying temperatureCurrent guidance for home-dried meat is to bring it to 160F before or during drying, which the original does not address at all. Commercial unseasoned jerky, ground in a food processor, is the simplest substitute.
- 3 parts to 2 partsThe recipe gives only 'parts', so measure meat and melted fat consistently, by volume or by weight. By the text's own statement that this carries twice the fat of plain pemmican, the plain version would run nearer 1 part fat to 3 parts meat. Either way this is a much greasier, softer mass. Mix while the fat is warm and liquid, then press into a pan and let it set.
- Marrow fat behaves differently from suetMarrow is softer and less saturated than the hard kidney fat often used, so a marrow-bound cake is likely to set softer than a suet one and may turn rancid sooner. Crack and boil the bones as directed, skim the fat from the surface, and strain it through cloth before mixing.
- Do not treat it as shelf-stableWhatever the original assumes about weeks in a skin bag, fat-bound meat made in a home kitchen should be wrapped tightly and kept refrigerated, or frozen for longer storage. Rancid fat is the usual failure, and it announces itself by smell.
- Buffalo and venison todayBison is now farmed and sold by mail order and in many supermarkets, so the note about occasional government herd sales is long obsolete. For wild venison, follow your state wildlife agency's current advice on chronic wasting disease testing and on handling; drying does not inactivate the agent involved.
- The bearskinIgnore the closing paragraph entirely. Bear hunting is licensed and restricted, and raw untanned hide is not a food container. Use a sealed jar or vacuum bag.
- Salt, and why it is called sweetThe name refers to richness, not sugar; the recipe says as much. If your dried meat was salted, the finished cake will taste distinctly salty; taste the powder before adding fat and adjust nothing else. Some versions of pemmican had dried berries beaten in, though this one does not.
- Yield and useA pound of dried meat plus its fat makes something like 1.5 to 1.7 lb of finished pemmican, very dense at roughly 170 calories an ounce. An ounce or two is a portion; it can also be crumbled into hot water with a little flour as an emergency stew.