Pemmican
Pemmican is a natural super food. It’s the original energy bar. Pemmican is dried meat with rendered fat in a 50/50 mixture. Dried berries and honey are also added depending on the season.The Native Americans created Pemmican. It was eagerly adopted by the Europeans that came. For those reasons I have been very eager to try some but finding it locally is impossible.
I’ve seen a few places online that have traditional pemmican for sale. The reviews however are mixed. Besides that I’m a DIY guy so I decided to make my own. Once again I ran into an issue. You can’t just go to the grocery store and buy tallow. So I got to thinking about using coconut oil. The list of health benefits is long, it’s a solid up to 76 degrees, has a neutral flavor and the big part is you can find it everywhere and fairly cheap.
How To Make Pemmican With Coconut Oil
I decided to make this recipe as plain and easy as possible. Normally I like to only use grass fed beef but since I was out and knew I would be replacing the fat with coconut oil I went ahead and used regular beef.
Start with one pound of ground beef. Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Then pour into a strainer and wash the meat off. You want to get all the grease off the meat. Then I wipe the grease out of the skillet and cook the beef a little longer so all the water was cooks off.
Dehydrate The Ground Beef
At this point I added it to my dehydrator while I slept. When I checked it and the ground beef had reduced in size and was completely dry.
I then added it to a bowl. The bowl was for measuring. Since we need equal parts dried meat to fat.
I had another bowl the same size so I filled and melted the coconut oil.
I eyeballed the level to check how much oil was needed. In the future I would instead go by weight since I ended up with too much oil
When I thought I had enough oil I went ahead and combined them in a bowl.
At this point you would add an other ingredients you had like dried berries, honey or spices.
After setting up in the fridge for a bit.
And after removing from the mold.
I figured I would cut it into blocks for individual portions. The pemmican had other ideas and just crumbled into pieces.
Even all crumbled it’s surprisingly tasty. This recipe is extremely calorie dense. Do not eat Coconut oil Pemmican everyday. It is not a snack food. It is ideal for hiking, strenuous activity, extreme cold weather or as a survival food. So head to you local store and spend a few bucks to try out this easy superfood.
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