In our last episode, I showed you how pemmican, the ultimate survival food, was made in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, I’m going to show you how you can
easily make it in a modern kitchen so that you can use it at your next historical reenactment,
your survival outing or even your next camping trip. Thanks for joining us today on 18th Century
Cooking with Jas Townsend and Son. Large quantities of pemmican was made with
bison. Today we’re using beef. If you have access to bison, or perhaps a
venison, you may use that instead. Bison was the obvious selection for large
scale pemmican production. Now, today the wild bison herd is very small,
but during the late 1700’s, great buffalo herds extended from just west of the Appalachian
mountains all the way to the Rockies, and as far south as what is now Mexico, all the
way north to arctic Canada. Many native peoples of America depended on
pemmican for their survival. It kept well and it was an excellent food
source, especially during hard winter months. Pemmican was also an important food source
for many voyagers and fur traders. The demand for pemmican put a tremendous strain
on the buffalo herd. There is one particular group of people call
the Metis. They were descendants of early voyageurs and
their Native wives. The Metis produced and supplied most of the
pemmican. They conducted two hunts per year, one in
the spring and one in the fall. A single Metis hunting party could have up
to a thousand ox drawn carts in tow and could return from the hunt with up to a million
pounds of pemmican and dried meat, and there were multiple Metis hunting parties. About half of the pemmican produced by the
Metis was kept and used by them to get them through the hard winter. The remaining pemmican was sold to the Hudson
Bay Company or it’s competitor The North-West Company. The pemmican sold to these companies would
provision vast crews of voyageurs that used to transport their goods. It was also sold to other backwoodsmen and
to outlying military posts. Competition between these two companies was
fierce. So fierce that battles broke out between the
employees of these companies. These battles became known as the pemmican
war. The British government eventually had to step
in and settle the matter by forcing a merger between the two companies. Now back to our meat. I’m slicing this meat very thinly. I’m going to put this in my modern oven,
preheated to the lowest temperature possible. You can use a dehydrator too if you wish. If you do, you ought to bake your meat strips
first in your oven at 200 degrees for about a half an hour and then you can place them
into the dehydrator to dry up. The process will take between 10 and 12 hours. Your meat should be completely dry and brittle
when it’s done. For every pound of raw beef, you should end
up with about a quarter pound of dried meat. Now some of you are probably thinking, Jon
why don’t you just use beef jerky instead of dried beef in this recipe? Well, typically is very highly salted, it’s
highly spiced and it also contains nitrates. These all add up to a very concentrated flavor
which isn’t good in pemmican. The other problem is, it’s cut with the
grain instead of against the grain, so it’s very difficult to break up into our powder. Once our meat is dry and brittle, I’m going to melt in a saucepan an equal amount by weight of suet. Today, I’m using Atora’s suet in this
recipe, which is available online on our website. Now you can render your own tallow from raw
suet, but make sure to watch our previous episode on suet that’ll give you instructions
on how to do that. Now I’m going to take my dried meat and
I could use a mortar and pestle, or even easier, I could use my food processor at home. Reguardless, I want to end up with a coarse
powder. I’ve got about 8 ounces of dried beef here. I’m going to mix in about an ounce of dried
berries, those are optional, along with 8 ounces of melted suet. A common version in the time period had ground
up choke berries. These you can find online. If you add dried berries to your pemmican,
it will not keep as well. This version is called seed pemmican. Let’s see what this pemmican tastes like
raw. You know, there’s not a lot of flavor right
up front. After you chew it for a while, you get a nice
little beefy flavor. The texture might turn off some, but hey,
if you’re tired and you’re hungry, this will keep you going. And here it is, authentic pemmican.
Came for the dank nugs in the preview, stayed for the history and delicious meat.
how long does this last? how does it compare to sausages?
Jas Townsend and Sons do a whole range of period cooking videos. Very professionally done and all equally entertaining. I've been gently encouraging him to do some 'Long Hunter' cooking videos for a long time now. He's said he's definitely interested but he's a busy guy.
10/10 would recommend!
Thanks! I've been reading about Shackleton's failed trans-Antarctic expedition, and have been wondering what dog pemmican was.
So. Taste?
This kind of stuff is real good to know.