Hey Danny,

Charlene and I concur wholeheartedly about older pemmican tasting better. Sally Fallon refers to pemmican as a fermented food in "Nourishing Traditions". Perhaps this explains why aging seems to enhance the flavor?

Lately we've been using 4 of Lex's cardboard dehydrators filled to max to increase our pemmican output. We use 150 watt "full-spectrum" bulbs. I can't imagine these bulbs add anything in particular to the end product but they sure give off a wonderful, warm glow. We also notice that the meat dried using Lex's light bulb method is a beautiful, rich shade of deep purple/brown as opposed to a flat, washed-out brown color that the meat took on when dried in our old metal-can type dehydrator. Interesting. Not sure what it means.

Pemmican rocks.

Delfuego

Danny wrote: "too much suet gives me a bit of acid reflux."

I've been experiencing increased burping and guessed it might be the extra suet I've been eating lately. You're post is helpful confirmation of that. Thanks fellow carnivore. Other replacing some suet with intramuscular fat, does anything help? Does marrow fat also help?

I've used Lex's box only once and I didn't like the taste of the jerky or pemmican. I thought I could detect the flavor the cardboard in the meat. My wife and BIL agreed. I still have them around and maybe I'll give them a go again some time, but for now I'm sticking to the Gardenmaster (an inappropriate name if there ever was one considering it has produced nothing but jerky since day 1). I'm hoping the cardboard flavor might go away with some use.

I think a high suet content may be an acquired taste. People try my pure muscle fat pemmi, and they may not rave about it, but they tolerate it. The suet only pemmi turns them off every time. My two year old will gobble up muscle fat pemmi, but won't even swallow a single bite of the suet only stuff. I've made 50/50 batches, and those go over fairly well.

This weekend I'm picking up an order of fat from the butcher that he tells me is only steak trimmings. I'm looking forward to trying that stuff, should make some tasty, premium tallow.

I'm trying to source some grass-fed fat locally. Not having much luck. I think I'm going to try to track down the processors of meat from Eatwild.com and see if I can get it from them. I figure if I get a ton, I'll just render it all down and put it in 5 gallon buckets. Why not, should keep a loooooong time if rendered correctly.

I've made and tried pemmican with 100% suet, 50/50 suet/muscle, and 75/25 suet/muscle. My preference is the 75/25 mix. I think it's all personal perference. I'm sure others would prefer the 50/50 to the 75/25. For me, there's not a big difference between those two blends. I just have a slight preference for the latter. What I'm very clear about is that I prefer either of the blended ones to the 100% suet one.

Thanks for reading Paleophil, good to have you here!

I may be correct in saying that excessive burping is a symptom of reduced stomach acid.

Myself and others have replaced suet with intramuscular fat with much success. I haven't tried marrow though.

Thanks for commenting UruJack,

Our experiences seem very similar.

Good luck on finding local farmers for muscular fat. I remember I spent a weekend of endless calling to find just one source! Most of the farmers were perplexed at my request.

Thanks for commenting Ken,

75/25 (muscle to suet) is what I'm currently eating as well. It seems perfect in terms of texture and taste.

Hi Danny,

Mine is the other way around: I prefer the 75% suet / 25% muscle blend. I do fine digesting suet, so that is not an issue for me. It's the taste of the 75 suet / 25 muscle that I prefer. Again, this is just a personal preference. I'm sure that in blind taste tests, there would be a dispersion of preferences.

Thanks for your always informative postings!

I think I've discovered the source of my increased burping--my last batch of tallow was a little sour because I had left the suet in the fridge and moisture got into the package, so I decided to increase the setting on my crockpot to "low" instead of "warm." It had an overcooked taste to me as a result. It got so I couldn't stand it anymore and threw it out as soon as I got some more suet. I went back to melting the suet at the "warm" setting and I'm burping less again. I then realized that the burping started when I started eating the overcooked tallow. This seems to confirm that cooking fat reduces its digestibility.

I checked the temps. The "low" setting measured 195 degrees Fahrenheit and the "warm" setting measured 130 degrees at the hottest points close to the sides of the crockpot.

You're welcome, Danny. My burping continues to decrease. So it really does look like heating fats makes them less digestible--and I only heated the suet to 195 degrees Fahrenheit! That nasty burping episode was worth it to advance the cause of science! :)

Here's an update Danny: Lex Rooker, knowledgeable as usual, pointed out that low-heating tallow probably doesn't release all the fatty acids. I think my problem was heating the tallow too long, rather than at too high a temp, so I'm going to try higher temp again, but also try to get used to eating more of my suet raw.