Pemmican

This recipe has been submitted by our favorite bike guy and fascinating paleo fanatic, Tim, at Acme Bicycles.

This is considered the perfect food. You can live on this stuff without the need of any other nourishment. It has approximately 70% fat and 30% protein. Tim made it with a little sea salt and surprisingly enough, it was fantastic. It reminded me of that beef jerkey you got as a kid that was shredded and in the little can.

On to the recipe.

Pemmican is a mix (50/50 by weight) of dried red meat (jerky) and tallow (rendered beef fat). In special occasions, dried berries could be added for "wedding" pemmican, or to be consumed for special occasions. The real deal meat and fat only pemmican is a plains Indians' staple food. It stores for years and provides a way to make use of red meat from game with a perfect nutritional profile. Jerky without the fat is too lean and leads to starvation in short order without the fat!

Slice thin some lean eye of round roast, and put in your dehydrator for 24-36 hours until dry, snap between your fingers dry. A 3 lb roast will yield 1lb of dried meat. Grind this very dry meat up in a food processor or whirlybird grinder. You want it powdered up like coffee ground sized. You can add salt/pepper/seasonings (or berries if you gotta have 'em) to the dry grinds.





Tallow is made from beef suet, kidney fat. You can get it on the cheap from any local butcher. Tell them you want the kidney fat, muscular fat will do, but suet is the most stable for tallow. Chop up 3-5 lbs of suet into dice sized chunks. Bake it in a large dish at 250 for an hour, stirring it once or twice. Strain off the liquid and run it through a fine mesh colander. Keep cooking it down, straining off the liquid, but do not scorch the fat, low heat is the key. You can feed the cooked down fat to your pets, mixed in with other meat scraps and such to keep from poisoning the critters with commercial pet food.



Weigh out even proportions of liquid fat and ground jerky, 50/50 by weight. Mix it up and you get a nice doughy texture. Portion this into individual containers and cool in the fridge. You can freeze it, or store it at room temp once it is sealed up in a ziplock or other container. Perfect snack on the go. You get about 70% calories from the fat, 30% from the protein. Quite possibly the perfect food, and highest nutrition per pound for bike trips, tours, camping, hiking adventures. Grass fed/organic or wild game meats have the best fatty acid profiles.