How To Make Pemmican - The Favorite Portable Meat of Survivalists and Adventurers

so many of you have requested this I am thrilled to share with you this recipe today if you've watched past videos you've seen us make hardtack or ships biscuit which is kind of a forever version of bread right but don't you need meat with that so so many of you has had to ask us to share our version of how we make pemmican and I've tried to stick as true to the original recipe from hundreds of years ago as I could and so in the next few minutes stay with us as we make this very simple three ingredient version of pemmican [Music] for this easy recipe that really only has the three main ingredients to it we start with the cut of beef that we use and this is pretty important now know that you can use any kind of red meat and that would include anything from deer or elk caribou buffalo for us it's easiest to get our hands on some good beef and traditionally for pemmican we want to use beef that is very lean that's why buffalo is so great because it has so low fat on it if we take and cook it with some good salt you could use sea salt or iodized salt cook it with the salt and it is going to impart flavor to it it's also going to keep it from ecoli and salmonella poisoning later and it's going to help it just preserve indefinitely on the shelf which is what we want that is the whole purpose of pemmican is having a product that's going to be shelf stable indefinitely so the salt is going to help with all of that but if you add way too much you got to remember this is going to boil down and down and down and get kind of concentrated so be careful how much salt you use because it could get very very strong quickly all right after that after we've boiled it for about eight hours we go ahead and just turn it right off literally that's all we do just let it sit we don't stir it or anything you're gonna let it set all night long and cool down cool down cool down what happens is as you know you've probably seen this before where that fat rises to the top and makes an wonderful layer of white thick solid fat on top and the next morning you can come out and go ahead and just skim that off kind of skins off in plates and is very easy to extract and you'll store it away incidentally that does make what we know as beef tallow or part of that recipe of beef tallow where we render the fat it's not quite finished in this state but we can use it for that later and you'll see that in future videos today we're going to use store about store-bought beef fat talo that's gonna work just great for us but you'll skim that off the top you'll go ahead and separate the water from the meat and for our future recipe on portable soup you'll put the water or the broth and liquid right back into the pot but that meat we're going to spread out on the layers in our dehydrator and let it go in the dehydrator for Oh about six to eight hours it kind of depends on how much meat you have but it if it's spread out thin across the layers it very quickly will become dry you want it to dry so well that it literally just crumbles under your touch so once I've taken it out of the dehydrator like you see I've got here the last thing I want to do is either put it in a food processor to grind up into almost a feathery little powder form or I could take a mortar and pestle I could just squish it with my fingers until I get it all powdered up or whatever is convenient for you so let me get this all processed down just a little bit further I'll probably use my food processor today just for speed but that's when it's the perfect consistency with no moisture for us to make it into the remainder of the recipe which is just two more steps to make pemmican okay we're ready to put the ingredients together but let me talk you through this there's three ingredients and it's pretty simple here we've got one part beef of course dehydrated one part some sort of dried berries and one part beef tallow thankfully this recipe is pretty forgiving so if I have a little bit more meat unless berries that's okay and really personally I end up using a little bit less than a third of the beef tallow because you just want just enough to get this all to stick together and then stop don't keep adding more beef tallow though some do and have pretty greasy type pemmican and that's okay as well but you want to aim for one third of each all right so what I've got is the wonderful dehydrated meat that we've gotten clear down to a pretty fine powder I didn't really have to get at that fine but it's good to go nextly i've got two different options for dehydrated berries here I've got wonderful little dehydrated blueberries and some wild blackberries that I picked now of course you can probably guess today I'm going to use the blueberries mostly because the wild blackberries are entirely usable they'd add a great little tiny bit of kick of flavor and that would be good but they do have those little seeds in them that I'm not as excited about however we know that blueberries are a superfood so I'm going to just grind these up either with a mortar and pestle or my food processor till they're not completely powder we want some sort of chunks to them but are much less than complete blueberries so let me get these ground up just a little bit for us and we'll stir it all together as it looks like it I have about half a cup of blueberries here so I'm very thankful in this case that the recipe is so forgiving you want about 1 to 1 to 1 ratio on all of these three ingredients and whether you measure in cups or ounces or by weight either way you're fine so you just whatever you have to work with you're wanting at about the same weight or measurement for each ingredient but because it's forgiving I'm going to put in half a cup of the blueberries and then I'm gonna make up the difference with that meat which is perfect for us to do so I'm gonna put in one full cup here of the meat and then about a half a cup more if it's got if there's that much for me to do I think it'll be about the whole amount we've got here let's see alright so there's one cup remember if you're measuring by weight which is ideal you're going to just measure what works for you and I can tell just by eyeballing it that I've got about a half a cup left here and I'm gonna scoop all the rest of that in there there's no harm with that and I know that it's gonna just work out perfect once I get the hello in there again we could use our own however this is not fully rendered the way that we want it to just right so for this today we're actually going to use store-bought beef tallow what I've got here is organic grass-fed beef tallow all-natural with no additives or preservatives I want to tell you this there are some who would say oh if you don't like beef tallow use peanut butter no that is not what you want to do first of all your recipe won't be shelf-stable any longer and the whole reason we're making pemmican is for you to have a meat product that you can take with you on the trail that is indefinitely shelf-stable and peanut butter put into it is not going to allow for that also there are some things people do add in and I would strongly encourage you to play with it but you could add walnuts or almonds you could also use dates wonderful dates they they give such flavor you could also add some onion and I usually would use the powdered onion if I was going to a little bit of powdered onion or salt or even honey some people add a little bit of honey but what you're going to run into when you do that is everything you add is going to shorten the shelf-stable lifespan of this product which is the whole point of making pemmican is something that's going to last for up to thirty years the only one that's going to lengthen its lifespan is the salt and just in case you were wondering you can't say oh I'll put in a bunch of nuts and then I'll just put salt in there with it so that it kind of counter balances unfortunately it doesn't work that way the nuts will still grow go rancid in it so now I've got this together I'm gonna go ahead and stir it up really good right before I add that tallow all right I've melted this down so it's just soft it's just nice and squishy and I'm gonna go ahead and put in oh I'm gonna start with about 2/3 of it because if I don't need the whole cup I'm not going to use the whole cup but I'm going to start stirring that in getting it incorporated and once it gets thick enough I will start using my hands to just squish it all together but for right now we'll use the spoon see how much of it we can get all make sure you have clean hands because if this is going to be on the Shelf you don't want any germs introduced that don't need to be there I think I might have the right amount without adding that last bit of the cup I've got about 1/4 of a cup left over there but I'm gonna go ahead and put my hands in here and see if we can't get that the rest of the way incorporated and then we'll turn it out onto a cookie sheet all right I've gone and washed my hands and that is a very interesting looking little clod we've got there but it is exactly what we want to see I'm gonna turn it out onto a baking sheet and I'll tell you this it does not have to be a baking sheet that is greased or anything like that because it has so much of that beef tallow in it that's all that we really need now I can just squish this out with my hand and that's probably what you'll want to do if you're having fun making a mess but I'm going to squish it into a square that's about 1/4 inch thick because then we'll be able to cut it into the bars once we've got it into the shape that we want it my goal is to get these about half an inch wide or more or less and about 2 inches long that way they'll fit perfect in a ziplock bag or in an Altoids tin for sure they'll fit in your pocket easily mm-hmm I didn't get it exactly right but that'll do and there we have our little bars of pemmican I am absolutely thrilled with how these turned out and just in case you're still wondering what the value of making pemmican in the first place is besides its historic value and a good project for you and perhaps other members of your family think of this we're putting it together with a couple of things that make it completely invaluable it is known as a shelf stable forever food which means it could last 10 20 even 30 years without refrigeration or any need for attention so if you can store it well you're gonna have a great product here but it's not very yummy by itself it does taste nice and meaty and you are getting lots of nutrition great protein in there but what makes it exceptionally good as when you pair it with a couple of other things you've seen perhaps in one of our earlier videos how to make ships biscuit or hardtack and if you have some of this which is also a forever food with you you've got kind of a bread and a meat and those are cooked together in what we are going to make in a future video and we'll have linked below this portable soup which is a wonderful shelf-stable soup that you can take with you that savory it's salty it gives so much flavor to this wonderful concoction that you put with these three things together all of them being shelf-stable and then if by chance here at your house you can throw in some of those dried beans or whatever you've got on hand stored in your pantry but if you're out in the wild you're going to add to it the vegetables that you find out where you are wherever you are today I have some poke some rosemary some dandelions some plantain but whatever you find out on the trail that you know of that's edible you can add to this and have a wonderful meaty hearty stew that is going to sustain you with the proteins and the carbohydrates that you need to make it back to the house or wherever it is that you're going on your way so make sure that you've watched all three and know how to make them because in and of themselves they're not that delicious but together my goodness my mouth is watering just thinking about it okay I hope you will take the time to do have the adventure of making this either by yourself or with friends and family but would you go out and be a blessing to someone else today and I just say to you may you be blessed in the week ahead before you go I gotta share another scripture with you and I just have to say this if you're a child of God you get all of his promises they're all for you and if you could pick out your favorites you might have something different than I do but just in case you don't have a favorite here's one for you this is in Isaiah chapter 43 verses one through three listen to these words it says but now thus says the Lord he who created you O Jacob and he who formed you O Israel fear not I have redeemed you I have called you by name and you are mine when you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they will not overwhelm you when you walk through fire you will not be burned and the flames will not consume you for I am the Lord your God the Holy One of Israel your Saviour I give Egypt as your ransom and cush and Siva in exchange for you isn't that a beautiful promise you get to clean that as his child now go spread the word [Music] you

Channel: PREPSTEADERS

Views: 240,001

Rating: 4.927587 out of 5

Keywords: Pemmican, Rubaboo, Rechaud, Forever foods, Recipe, Prepsteaders, Survival Food, Christa Swartz, Hardtack, Portabable Soup, Foraging

Id: JXtt1lLetUo

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Fri May 18 2018