Pemmican
A nutrition bar with a 1:1 ratio of meat to fat
Servings: 8 bars
Equipment
- Food dehydrator (or the sun, or a fire)
- Food processor (or rocks)
- Meat slicer (or sharp stone knife)
- Kitchen scales (or two hands and two eyeballs for estimating)
Ingredients
- 5 lb beef hearts Other lean meat may be used, but hearts are best.
- 1 lb rendered beef tallow
Instructions
- Slice beef hearts very thin using either a meat slicer (recommended) or a very sharp knife. Slightly frozen meat slices much more easily.
- Lay slices out on food dehydrator sheets in a single layer.
- Dehydrate for 6-8 hours at 167 degrees. Meat is done when it snaps nicely in two.
- Using a food processor, grind the dried meat to a powder. Don't leave large pieces, as it makes the texture of the bar much less enjoyable. This takes a while, and it's loud, so cover your ears.
- It's a good idea to get as close to a 50/50 blend of meat and fat as possible for the sake of shelf-life and flavor. Make note of the weight of both the bowl you will mix the meat in, and the saucepan in which you will melt down the beef tallow, so that you can zero out those amounts when you weigh your meat powder and tallow.
- Add the tallow to the pan and melt it down.
- Weigh the meat powder to determine how much fat to use. 5 lbs of meat will usually dry out to about 1 lb of powder. Then weigh out the same amount of fat and mix the two together.
- At this point, you can flavor your pemmican if you like. Suggested additions: 1/4 cup honey, freezedried blueberries, berry powder.
- Pour into a baking dish. I usually use a 9x13 for this amount, but you can do whatever thickness you like.
- This will set right on the counter, or you can put it in the fridge for a few minutes to go faster. After it's set, cut it into the desired number of pieces.
- Store individually wrapped in plastic wrap or baggies, or for longer shelf-life, in vacuum-sealed bags.