Pemmican is a concentrated mixture of fat and protein used throughout history as a nutritious foodstuff.It was invented by the native peoples of North America. It was widely adopted as a high-energy food by Europeans involved in the fur trade and later by Arctic and Antarctic explorers.

It is different from beef jerky by adding a ratio of approximately 50% dried meat and 50% melted fat. Like jerky, pemmican (if made properly) can be stored for years at a time.

My pemmican adventure started after seeing a post on the Charles Washington's Zero Carb Forum. It also helped that Grant got me a dehydrator for Christmas. After all the pieces fell into place, I really didn't have a reason not to.

I purchased a 3lb piece of lean round. The leaner the better.

After freezing the meat for a while, to make it easier to cut, I divided it among the 4 trays.

This is what it looked like after 10 hours in the dehydrator. It needs to be super dry so i let it go another day and a half.

Close up of the dried meat. It should snap in half after it's completed. I usually dry the meat for at least 48 hours, but will differ based on your dehydrator.

Next I ground the meat up using my $25 POS food processor that I got from Walmart. Make sure to grind the jerky down to a DUST. I recently purchased a Vitamix blender for this and it works like magic.

I weighed, rendered and strained the fat. I let the mixture sit overnight and was I was finished!

Update on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 10:24PM by Danny Roddy

Here's where I'm at today with pemmican production. I have learned quite a few things along the way.

http://tinyurl.com/pe4pyb