Pemmican

Anyone who doesn’t have all of his teeth, or who is merely tired of chewing on jerky, ought to consider making a batch or two of pemmican. The term came from the Cree language and means journey meat. The idea behind pemmican, of course, is to pack a maximum amount of nourishment into a minimum bulk.

To make pemmican, the Crees and other Native Americans hung thin strips of venison or buffalo in the sun for a few days, as when making jerky. After the meat dried, they pounded it into a pulp and mixed it with the fat from a bear or a goose. (Modern practitioners might use hog lard.) Such a mix, packed in rawhide bags, would keep indefinitely. Sometimes dried fruits or berries were mixed in with the meat and fat, and became part of the pemmican. Or the fruits could be stored separately and eaten along with the pemmican.