Pemmican, the perfect food
I recently found a great way to store meats that does not involve the use of preservatives or any special equipment. The whole process involves very basic, easy to make tools.
You can dry the meat and berries using a smoker or solar drier.
You can shred the meat using a grinding stone.
You can heat the fat using a solar cooker.
You can store the final product in any air tight container, in an underground cellar or something.
It stores for a very, very long time (not totally sure yet just how long, but I would guess a year or more)
It provides your body with everything it needs to stay alive and mobile. Over a cold winter is an example of when it would come in handy.
It doesnt need to be cooked or anything once it has been made.
Anyway here is the article I read with some really good information, at the bottom there is a link to the article, which also contains the directions on how to make pemmican.
"Pemmican is a Native American word roughly translated as "travel food made for long trips." A compact source of concentrated energy needing no preparation on the trail, Native American pemmican often included bear fat, berries and anything else that was nutritious and available. The energy bar traces its roots back to the Middle Ages. Crusaders tucked an energy bar, called the panforte (a mix of flour, honey, shortening, nuts and dried fruit), into their tunics to give them a lift during long marches.
Pemmican may be one of the world's perfect foods. It is only pure protein, fat, and carbohydrate . . . n perfect ratio. It gives the body the densest nutritional value in a simple, hand-feeding manner. Its high energy ingredients keeps one from being hungry yet feeds the body everything it needs. It is very simple, easy to carry, easy to eat, and tastes incredible.
Why speak about this meat-and-fat food on a fitness website?
We are all looking for the perfect food to eat, which is delicious, nutritious, satisfying, easy, and quick on the go. Let's face it, the reason why "fast food" is so popular is because we can eat it at any time, and it allows us to get on with our busy schedules. But what if there was a healthy alternative which takes no longer to prepare than an average dinner, is actually rather fun, last without refrigeration, and can take up to 2 weeks to eat, staying fresh the whole while?
I myself am reducing my meat-foods. I highly respect my vegetarian friends, so I have found a meatless pemmican bar which suffices to curb hunger and give nutritional support.
Meat Pemmican is a mixture of dried meat and suet which is eaten unheated, and which keeps for years under reasonable conditions. The first recorded use of pemmican was by North American tribes (particularly the Assiniboin of Dakota and the sub-arctic peoples), by whom it had been used for generations. It became more widely known in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a staple for polar explorers. Although it is unlikely that pemmican has been made for long enough to have impacted on nutritional aspects of human evolution, it happens that pemmican recreates what was probably a dietary staple for one, two or three million years.
As a fan of history, I've always known about pemmican. Native American peoples carried it for traveling on their hunts, I've always known that these Native Americans are quite healthy, active, and relatively disease-free cultures, when not eating processed foods of today.
I was re-introduced to pemmican by Ray Audette, author of Neanderthin, and Jon Benson, nutritionist and fan of paleolithic ("cave-man") eating. The theories of Paleolithic diet are simple: our bodies work better on foods we were meant to have: which is anything hunted, picked, or gathered. For a very basic overview of paleolithic nutrition, click this Paleolithic explanation.
When meeting Ray personally, he gave me some of his own home-made pemmican to try. He and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, throughout time, swear by its energy and even its taste. I am giving you Ray's recipe as well as my own details.
Note: do not be afraid that you are eating fat. Fat is needed by your body, period, and the 'whole fat versus non-fat' argument is becoming very heated. You will stay slim longer on eating sensibly with 'natural' healthy fats, than by eating processed foods which say "non-fat" but give you additional chemicals, fake fats, and harmful trans-fats."
Click here for full article and recipe to make pemmican.
Sourced from http://www.physicalmind.com/pemmican.htm
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May 8th, 2008
Suet / Tallow
Now something else I found out while reading this is that the suet the article tells you to use is actually incorrect. The suet should first be turned into tallow by rendering the suet. Suet = raw fat from an animal, Tallow = Rendered fat from an animal.
The rendered suet (or tallow) can be used to make the pemmican, candles, and soap.
Here is how to render suet and make it into tallow(again it is referenced from another article, see the bottom for a link):
Special Note about the fat you get:
Any animal fat (cow, deer, sheep, buffalo) can be rendered into tallow, but the quality of the fat you use will determine the quality of the tallow. Many people swear by only using "kidney suet", the fat that surrounds the cow's kidneys. It's much harder and whiter and makes really wonderful tallow. It's also really hard to find anywhere but a specialty butcher shop - and you're likely to pay a pretty penny for it - whereas normal, everyday beef fat from the grocery store butcher is likely to be free. Is there a difference? Probably - to the purists at least - but I haven't noticed a big difference in the soaps I've made.
How to do it:
If you look on the label of most any commercially available soap today, you'll see "Sodium Tallowate" listed as an ingredient. Sodium Tallowate is the byproduct of mixing lye with tallow or beef fat. (Technically, tallow is fat (beef or other) that has been rendered.)Yup...the #1 ingredient used in most soaps is beef fat.
Whether you agree with them or not, there are a few simple reasons why beef fat (or tallow) is used so widely in soap:
1. It's cheap
2. It's readily available
3. It makes good soap
I don't use a lot of tallow in my soaps because vegetable oils are easier to store and there are a lot of people who just don't like the idea of beef fat in their soaps. But for those who don't mind or don't care, I do make an occasional batch with tallow.
So...how do we render beef (or other animal) fat into tallow? It's pretty easy. To render the tallow you'll need:
• 3-5 pounds of fat-chopped or ground into as small of pieces as possible. (Make friends with the butchers in your
local grocery - or better yet, take them some soap - and you'll have all the fat you ever need!)
• A large pot
• Water and some salt
• A sieve or collander
• A large bowl to cool it in
Add enough water to the pot to just cover the tallow. Add about 1 tbs. of salt for every pound of fat.
You'll notice here that my fat is in very small chunks. The smaller the chunks, the quicker it will render. Ask your butcher (nicely) to run the fat through the grinder. It makes a big difference! (And don't forget to take them a bar of soap when it's done!)
Heat the mixture to boiling, then reduce the heat to a low simmer. The chunks of fat will start to release the liquid fat, and any meat that was left in the fat will start to cook.
Be sure to turn on the range fan - it will get smelly!
The size of your fat chunks will determine how long you have to boil the mixture. For my pre-ground fat, I only had to simmer it about 20-30 minutes. If the chunks were larger, it will take longer.
When all that is left solid in the pot is browned meat and gristle, you've gotten about all of the fat you are going to get.
Carefully pour the liquid through a sieve or collander into a large bowl in the sink. You want to strain out all of the pieces of meat and gristle. The water will sink to the bottom and fat will rise to the top of the bowl.
You can mix the meat and gristle with some peanut butter to make a treat for the birds.
Let the liquid cool to room temperature. Then carefully put the bowl into the refrigerator. Let it cool overnight. The tallow will cool into a large white disc on the top of the bowl.
Using a knife or a fork, pry up the disc of tallow and put the pieces into a large bowl.
Now comes a tricky part. What's left will be a gelatinous, gray goo. You don't want to pour the leftover liquid into the sink - there may still be some chunks/particles of fat left that can clog your sink pipes. I recommend throwing it out into the backyard, or at least into the toilet.
On the bottom side of the tallow, there will likely be some loose pellet-like particles of fat. Wipe off as much of this as possible with a paper towel, and wash the rest off under some cool running water. Again, you don't want too much of this going down your sink drain.
Cut the tallow into small pieces and put it into a plastic freezer bag. Label the bag as to when you made the tallow. It will keep a year or so in the freezer. As you need it for your recipes, just break off a few chunks and throw them into your soap pot!
Sourced from : http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soapmakingoils/ss/rendertallow.htm