Pemmican?
Does anyone make there own?
Is there a simple recipe?
Want to give it a try but old threads seem to ramble!
Does anyone make there own?
Is there a simple recipe?
Want to give it a try but old threads seem to ramble!
pemmican, do you make your own?
- Thread starter Pignut
- Start date
Actually found this
"Somewhere, there should be a monument to Pemmican. This
remarkable energy-giving food, borrowed from the Indians, was in great
measure responsible for the first crossing of the North American
continent, the exploration of the far northwest, and the first successful
attempts to reach the North Pole and the South Pole. To the lack of it
can be attributed the failure of Scott' s first Antarctic expedition; the
almost incredible hardships endured by explorers seeking routes across
the Rockies to the Pacific, such as the Lewis and Clark expedition in
1804-06; and the death of hundreds in the gold rush to the Klondike.
The North West Fur Company was founded in Montreal shortly after
the British defeated the French in 1763 and occupied the St. Lawrence
River Valley, For 100 years, the Hudson's Bay Company had held a
legal monopoly of the fur trade in the vast drainage basin of Hudson
Bay. Their "factors" lived in trading posts and, even when traveling,
they clung to the costly bulky heavy items of British diet -- porridge,
bread and salted meat.
The traders of the new company, led by Peter Pond, a Connecticut
Yankee, found a route up the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes,
and thence to the heart of the unexplored northwest at Lake Athabaska,
near the headwaters of two great rivers -- the Peace and the Mackenzie.
From the Crees and Chipewyans, Pond learned to make and use
pemmican, which he described as "dried meat pounded to a powder and
mixed up with buffaloes greese", Alexander Mackenzie spent the winter
of 1788-89 with old Peter Pond and, using pemmican as food, went on
northward to the Arctic Ocean, traveling the river which now bears his
name.
In, 1793, he went down the Peace River to the Pacific Ocean, leaving
pemmican buried in caches along the route for his return. That was the
first westward crossing of this continent. Eventually, competition
between the rival fur companies became so bitter that, in 1814, it
flamed into the bloody Pemmican War. In 1821 the two merged and the
new Hudson's Bay Company based its remarkable transportation
system, covering all of Canada and what is now the northwestern part of
the United States, upon the use of canoes and pemmican.
The Indians invented pemmican as a condensed food for long overland
journeys and for winters when game was scarce. The lean meat of
animals such as buffalo, elk and deer, was cut in thin slices and dried
over a slow fire, or by the hot sun, or by freezing. Then it was pounded
to shreds between two stones. The pounded meat was mixed with an
equal quantity of boiling fat from the suet (inside fat) and from the
hump or rump, and packed in bags or baskets. Eaten cold, it is nearly
tasteless at first but the flavor develops as it is chewed.
Some Indians added berries or wild cherries, and Mackenzie
occasionally boiled it with the tops of wild parsnips. Admiral Peary
sometimes added a few raisins but he and his men ate it cold -- one-half
pound twice a day. He wrote that it was the only food for Eskimo dogs
on a long Polar journey and: "Of all foods I am acquainted with,
pemmican is the only one that, under appropriate conditions, a man can
eat twice a day for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year and
have the last mouthful taste as good as the first.... It is the most
satisfying food I know. " Other than pemmican, he carried only tea,
condensed milk and hardtack.
Men forced to live solely on salted meats, bread and cereals, suffered
and died from scurvy: a disease which results from the lack of Vitamin
C. Men who live on pemmican have no scurvy. It is unequaled for
compactness, lightness, wholesomeness, palatability and sustaining
power."
A good little read,
Seems that equal weights of suet and dried/powdered meat are the way to go!
(Adding some dried fruit seems another way!)
Cheers
Is there a vendor in the UK who supplies dried/powdered meats?
"Somewhere, there should be a monument to Pemmican. This
remarkable energy-giving food, borrowed from the Indians, was in great
measure responsible for the first crossing of the North American
continent, the exploration of the far northwest, and the first successful
attempts to reach the North Pole and the South Pole. To the lack of it
can be attributed the failure of Scott' s first Antarctic expedition; the
almost incredible hardships endured by explorers seeking routes across
the Rockies to the Pacific, such as the Lewis and Clark expedition in
1804-06; and the death of hundreds in the gold rush to the Klondike.
The North West Fur Company was founded in Montreal shortly after
the British defeated the French in 1763 and occupied the St. Lawrence
River Valley, For 100 years, the Hudson's Bay Company had held a
legal monopoly of the fur trade in the vast drainage basin of Hudson
Bay. Their "factors" lived in trading posts and, even when traveling,
they clung to the costly bulky heavy items of British diet -- porridge,
bread and salted meat.
The traders of the new company, led by Peter Pond, a Connecticut
Yankee, found a route up the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes,
and thence to the heart of the unexplored northwest at Lake Athabaska,
near the headwaters of two great rivers -- the Peace and the Mackenzie.
From the Crees and Chipewyans, Pond learned to make and use
pemmican, which he described as "dried meat pounded to a powder and
mixed up with buffaloes greese", Alexander Mackenzie spent the winter
of 1788-89 with old Peter Pond and, using pemmican as food, went on
northward to the Arctic Ocean, traveling the river which now bears his
name.
In, 1793, he went down the Peace River to the Pacific Ocean, leaving
pemmican buried in caches along the route for his return. That was the
first westward crossing of this continent. Eventually, competition
between the rival fur companies became so bitter that, in 1814, it
flamed into the bloody Pemmican War. In 1821 the two merged and the
new Hudson's Bay Company based its remarkable transportation
system, covering all of Canada and what is now the northwestern part of
the United States, upon the use of canoes and pemmican.
The Indians invented pemmican as a condensed food for long overland
journeys and for winters when game was scarce. The lean meat of
animals such as buffalo, elk and deer, was cut in thin slices and dried
over a slow fire, or by the hot sun, or by freezing. Then it was pounded
to shreds between two stones. The pounded meat was mixed with an
equal quantity of boiling fat from the suet (inside fat) and from the
hump or rump, and packed in bags or baskets. Eaten cold, it is nearly
tasteless at first but the flavor develops as it is chewed.
Some Indians added berries or wild cherries, and Mackenzie
occasionally boiled it with the tops of wild parsnips. Admiral Peary
sometimes added a few raisins but he and his men ate it cold -- one-half
pound twice a day. He wrote that it was the only food for Eskimo dogs
on a long Polar journey and: "Of all foods I am acquainted with,
pemmican is the only one that, under appropriate conditions, a man can
eat twice a day for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year and
have the last mouthful taste as good as the first.... It is the most
satisfying food I know. " Other than pemmican, he carried only tea,
condensed milk and hardtack.
Men forced to live solely on salted meats, bread and cereals, suffered
and died from scurvy: a disease which results from the lack of Vitamin
C. Men who live on pemmican have no scurvy. It is unequaled for
compactness, lightness, wholesomeness, palatability and sustaining
power."
A good little read,
Seems that equal weights of suet and dried/powdered meat are the way to go!
(Adding some dried fruit seems another way!)
Cheers
Is there a vendor in the UK who supplies dried/powdered meats?
I doubt it, but you can DIY. This sounds like a great food source and I'm definitely going to have a go 
I doubt it, but you can DIY. This sounds like a great food source and I'm definitely going to have a go
I thought it may be a long shot!
Will have to get the dehydrator out!
(Your thonging
is on the way, by the way)
It's worth considering the Bison Bushcraft "Backwoods Cookery Weekend". Quite apart from a wide range of tips under expert tuition, one of the instructors, Steve, does an excellent session on trail foods in general, including making Pemmican...
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