In praise of pemmican

 

Thanks to all the research I've done for my Western novels, I've long been aware that pemmican was regarded as a complete food by travelers in the early West.  There were trappers who traveled and worked for an entire season eating almost nothing but pemmican for months on end.  It kept for long periods, never went rotten or stale, and provided almost all the nutrition a body could desire.  Later, early Arctic and Antarctic explorers took pemmican with them for the same reasons.  (You can read more about trappers' and explorers' use of pemmican in this article.)

Wikipedia describes the preparation of traditional pemmican as follows:

Traditionally, pemmican was prepared from the lean meat of large game such as bison, elk, deer, or moose. The meat was cut in thin slices and dried, either over a slow fire or in the hot sun until it was hard and brittle. Approximately 5 pounds (2,300 g) of meat are required to make 1 pound (450 g) of dried meat suitable for pemmican. This thin brittle meat is known in Cree as pânsâwân and colloquially in North American English, as "dry meat". The pânsâwân was then spread across a tanned animal hide pinned to the ground, where it was beaten with flails or ground between two large stones till it turned into very small pieces, almost powder-like in its consistency. The pounded meat was mixed with melted fat in an approximate 1:1 ratio by weight. Typically, the melted fat would be suet that has been rendered into tallow. In some cases, dried fruits, such as blueberries, chokecherries, cranberries, or saskatoon berries, were pounded into powder and then added to the meat-fat mixture. The resulting mixture was then packed into rawhide bags for storage where it would cool, and then harden into pemmican.

There's more at the link.

I have friends in the blogosphere and writing community who are also aware of the benefits of pemmican.  A number of us have been wanting to try it as part of our diets, to see whether the health benefits were as good as claimed, and particularly whether it was so "complete" a food as to be able to replace almost all other elements of a modern diet if necessary.  We also wanted to consider it for inclusion in our emergency food supplies, for times of trouble.  Unfortunately, pemmican is very expensive - not surprising, given that, as described above, it takes five pounds of lean, fresh meat to make one pound of pemmican.  However, I decided to take the plunge, and turned to Steadfast Provisions for a supply of their premium product.  I bought several pounds of pemmican to distribute among my friends and acquaintances, inviting them to try it and see how it worked for them.

That project is still a work in progress, but I've been so impressed by pemmican's effect on my own health that I wanted to share some of the results in advance, as it were.  For two weeks, excluding the weekend between, I ate no other solid food at all besides minimal quantities of pemmican.  I found I didn't need much of it at all to satisfy me, along with liquids such as water, black coffee and tea, bouillon, and occasionally some bone broth.  I've used it as part of an intensive weight-loss fasting diet, and the pemmican more than made up (nutritionally speaking) for the "regular" foods that I was no longer eating.  (Yes, I'm checking that through blood tests, which are an integral part of such a strenuous diet for obvious health and safety reasons.)

Steadfast Provisions makes pemmican in one-meal-size 750-calorie bars (in seasoned, unseasoned and "simply salted" flavors) and bricks containing enough nutrition for one person for three days or more (in seasoned and "simply salted" flavors).  I bought the latter, simply salted, because it was the only item available in their online store at the time (they sell out their production runs very quickly, to a dedicated customer base).  As noted above, it appears expensive at $97 per brick;  but when one works out the amount of fresh meat involved, the price is far more justifiable.  At over two pounds in weight, one brick of pemmican contains over ten pounds of lean fresh meat;  then there's the cost and time involved in drying, crushing, preparing and packaging it.  On a pound-per-dollar basis, that's a very reasonable price, IMHO.

On its own, the "simply salted" version of pemmican doesn't taste particularly appetizing, in my opinion (although it's not at all unpleasant - just bland;  the seasoned version might add more flavor).  However, if one cuts a slice and then spreads a little honey on it, or even a fruit preserve, it becomes far more palatable.  (I note that Native American tribes used to eat pemmican with wild honey.). Also, when combined with beef bouillon or bone broth, pemmican adds a huge dose of protein to the drink.  That's mainly how I've been using it.  As part of my liquid fasting diet, I've occasionally used Campbell's Beef Consommé, which has minimal calories and/or carbohydrates but a lot of flavor.  Chopping a small amount of pemmican into it is a great way to increase its food value.

As for emergency use, I think the immense food value stored in pemmican is likely to be very useful indeed during a "bugging out" situation.  One can carry three days' worth of food in a two-pound brick of pemmican, needing no other nutrition.  That's pretty weight-efficient, if you ask me, and doesn't add much bulk to one's load.  It'll also be useful at home as a backup to more conventionally preserved foods, adding nutritional value to their flavor.  Pemmican has a very long shelf life, so it's unlikely to go bad unless carelessly stored.  I'll be adding some to our supplies.

I'm still collecting feedback from friends who've also tried Steadfast Provisions' pemmican, but so far their verbal responses have been very positive.  I'll report them more fully in a few weeks.  Meanwhile, I can only encourage my readers to try pemmican for themselves.  I think it's well worth its cost.

(In case you were wondering, no, I'm not being compensated in any way by Steadfast Provisions for reviewing their product.  I chose to buy from them after researching customers' reviews of several online vendors, and paid for my pemmican out of my own pocket.  After such positive results, I'll be buying more!)

Peter