Pemmican is a good low carb solution for a travel food that you can easily carry with you for snacks or meal replacement. Many people have bad reactions (stalls, loss of ketosis, weight gain, etc) to the prepackaged low carb bars, but they still want the convenience of an easily portable meal "bar". Pemmican is it. Read about the history of pemmican and its nutritional value here:
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/pemmican.html
Pemmican is very popular with the NeanderThin and Paleolithic diet folks, and it is also Atkins friendly. You will find multiple recipes for pemmican on these pages, but here is mine.
Any quantity you like of very lean meat. Round steak or flank steak is ideal, you can also use venison or even chicken. Remove all fat and gristle from the meat, and as much of the tough connective tissue as possible.
Approximately 2 lbs suet per 4-5 lbs of meat (solid beef fat, ask your butcher or save fatty scraps from meat, or fat drippings from your hamburger). You will need a little less than 1 lb of rendered tallow for every 4-5 lbs of fresh meat. Fatty scraps will yield less than suet but are easier to come by.
Optional ingredients include dried fruit, nuts and spices. You can also add things like soy lecithin, whey protein powder, dried vegetables, oats or whatever else you like that works for your diet. If you are using dried fruit or nuts, chop or grind them into small pieces and add them sparingly.
For the marinade, per pound of meat: 1 tbsp non iodized salt, 1 tbsp garlic and/or onion powder, 1 tsp ground black pepper, other spices to taste. Add enough water to cover the meat.
Slice the meat very thinly (1/8") and marinate at least 30 minutes, or in the fridge overnight. Alternatively you can skip the marinade and use a dry rub with salt, but sprinkle it very lightly. You will find it easier to slice the meat if you partially freeze it first.
Dry the meat on racks overnight in your oven with the door ajar and the temperature setting well below 200F. You want 100 to 150 degrees. You can also use a dehydrator. You want to dry the meat, not cook it. If you overheat the meat during this stage it will be gritty in the end product.
When the meat is dry and brittle, grind it in a food processor or commercial grain grinder. Your consistency may range from a fine powder to coarse meal to shredded beef jerky. Some texture is desirable. How much texture you want in the final product is up to you.
Render the suet or drippings by melting them slowly over low heat, pouring off the pure fat and straining any impurities. You may put beef fat scraps in a pot with a few tablespoons of water in the oven on low heat and leave them for several hours. Your end product should be hard and white or yellowish white at room temperature. This is tallow.
Mix any seasonings or additions thoroughly with the shredded/powdered dried beef. Slowly add the tallow while stirring vigorously, just enough to moisten the mixture to a crumbly shortbread dough consistency.
Scoop the crumbly dough into small fold-top (not ziplock) sandwich bags. Squeeze tightly and compress the dough into a ball, or a square or a bar if you prefer. Set aside and allow to cool.
Basic pemmican (meat, fat, dried fruit only) keeps many years at normal room temperature if kept dry. Condensation of moisture in an airtight container can quickly spoil pemmican. For long term storage of your non airtight sacks of pemmican, a canvas or cloth bag is suggested to keep out insects and to prevent condensation. The addition of nuts makes pemmican less stable as the nuts can go rancid if not kept cool. If you do not add any dried fruit, the reported shelf life of pemmican is 30 years.
Nutritional data depends on your proportions and additions, but historical pemmican was about 50-50 dry meat to tallow weight. NeanderThin pemmican is 60-40 meat to tallow. Assume it takes between 4 and 5 oz of lean meat to make 1 oz of the dried meat, and calculate the amount of beef tallow you have used per oz of meat.
Pemmican is very high calorie, has protein and fat, and is a satisfying meal replacement bar when you are stuck without any dietary options. It is too high calorie to be constantly munching on as a snack food, so keep in mind that you are eating 8 to 10 oz of meat with plenty of fat when you eat a 2 oz portion of pemmican. That's basically a full meal, which is what pemmican was originally designed to be.
July 11th, 2003, 03:06 AM
Pemmican 
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