Pemmican - Food for thought

[Tom_Ranger]

I came across this video on Townsend (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYDuOKI8maQ) about Pemmican and I was wondering if any of you actually made some and tried it as your exclusive food source for several days on a LARP or similar?

I know you can mix nuts and berries with it but that really reduces the shelf life. I would think having some spice handy would be a good item to carry and just plan on making the pemmican into a dish, but it can also be eaten raw.

[Elleth]

I've tried it with less than great success - the taste was something like tallow candles. Maybe I got the ratios wrong, but I really wasn't a fan. I suppose it's rather quick and easy to prepare compared to other preservation methods, and unlike jerky lets you keep the fat - so as a way to quickly make travel rations of meat you intend to cook, perhaps not a bad idea.

But smoked dry sausage is not too different in concept, and much tastier I think.

On the other hand, I've known Alaskan bush pilots to carry a bag of dry dog food in their plane in case they got stuck way out back of beyond - enough food value to keep you alive, but not so tasty you're ever tempted to sneak a snack. Maybe pemmican's meant to be the same. I don't know if I could ignore a bag full of jaegerwurst like I could a bag full of pemmican.

[Turgolanas]

I made some a while back. I found it to be fairly easy to make, and not too horrible - I had enough dried fruit in mine that it tasted similarly to a fruit power bar, complete with the weird power bar aftertaste. My issue was that I had too much tallow and not enough meat, so the mixture did not do well in summer heat. I still need to remake with double the meat that I used.

That being said, it is a necessity food, not an enjoyable one. I would carry it as a snack/backup, or out of necessity on long outings. Also, everyone else who tried it hated it, so your mileage may vary.

[Thalion of Bree]

I've had pemmican before, and on its own, it's not really all that great. However, there is some evidence that it may not have only been eaten on its own; a pemmican stew called Rubaboo was sometimes eaten by the Metis, who introduced it to the Canadian Mounties. I have yet to try Rubaboo, but I imagine with some salt and some potatoes, it would be rather more palatable than the sum of its parts.

[Barandir]

When I was working as a butcher, we actually made and sold several batches of pemmican, and I even took some camping on a bachelor party trip as some good snack food. We added dried fruit to ours, and while I have seen others say that affects the shelf life of the pemmican, that makes zero sense to me. Dried fruits such as currants, blueberries, and cranberries (which were the main ones we used) already have an incredibly long shelf life, and I do not foresee mixing it with dehydrated beef, tallow, and salt affecting the overall shelf life of any of the ingredients. We chopped the fruit up very fine in the food processor the same as the beef, so it made a fairly homogeneous mixture.