People speak of a food that is 100% nutritionally complete, light weight and will keep good for years without refrigeration. It is the ultimate travel food. Developed by native Americans its got more nourishment per ounce than any other food and can be eaten by a man indefinitely and sustain him.

In fact some people do exactly that, they live entirely on this one food, US Admiral Peary as a example ate nothing but it for 20 years.

It needs no salt to preserve, and stored just in rawhide would be good 20 years later.Thousands of hunters, trackers and explorers relied on this substance from the Indians.

This food that I speak of is Pemmican.

Moisture is removed from beef and this beef is shredded and mixed with a equal part of melted fat. 

That’s all it takes to make the greatest travel food in the world. But the bitch is in the details.

First off if the meat is cooked at a temperature above 120degrees you start to destroy the nutrients and you either: stop halfway and don’t completely dry the meat so it lasts just a few days unrefrigerated or you completely cook the meat and because of lacking nutrients you end up with scurvy and other nutritional deficits along your journey.   

Unfortunately the FDA legally requires anyone who sells dried meat to cook it to 160 degrees! This is why all beef jerky you buy is nothing more than flavored leather.

Properly preparing the fat is another story, that starts off with actually finding the stuff, the only market I’ve found so far that was willing to sell it to me was the Spanish market vallarta. The man pulled the fat trimmings out of a GARBAGE CAN and tried to sell it to me for 1.59.

Fuck you, If I’m going to get meat from your trashcan at least give it to me for free.

Anyways Preparing fat is a long way away for me, first I must master making jerky.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

This cost me about $15 to make:

A 150 watt bulb shines onto the meat from below, sucking the moisture from it.  I figured this would work pretty well, at its early stage flys crawled all over the meat and were a bit of a nuisance. Later the owner of the house started complaining about the light being on and asked me to turn it off at night? Oh well Ryan and I bravely tried the meat a little too early, so we might get sick from eating meat that sat out in a warm temperature for 12 HOURS that still had a little moisture in the center. I tried it again recently, while still it could be dryer it tastes much better but still bad. I looked online to see if there was a better way and as is often the face I found my way to a Alton Brown. What a Genius.

Part 1-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK4DVLHf7Y

Part 2-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfI0NKl-Kq0

Skip to 1:35 of the second video and Alton explains a better way to dehydrate meat.

With a cool air. I doubt anyone is going to complain about a fan in summer.

Looks like I’m making another trip on my bike to the hardware store and possibly Wal-Mart to pick up things that are really hard to carry on a bike. Wish me luck!

The Journey may be difficult but I won’t give up!

Update:August 1st

A new day! I was going to go build a makeshift dehydrator, but my LOVELY SIGNIFICANT OTHER Cassidy decided to buy me a fancy $80 food dehydrator!

It looks nice doesn’t it?

Its estimated to arrive on the 4th! The great thing about a food dehydrator i s that I can do so much more than beef strips!

Fruits, Vegies, a gun for making jerky out of ground beef and a tray for making fruit rollups! This is going to be wonderful!

It has a temperature control(~95-155 temp range) and a fan and its significantly faster at drying than what I was using before! What took days will be done in hours! 5 trays with the possibility to expand to 12!

Not pictured the jerky kit comes with 5 cures and 5 seasonings, 2 clean a screens- 2 fruit rollup trays that double as a way to catch any drippings for dehydrated beef and it comes with a guide book!

I’m so excited.

Thanks for getting me such a great gift Cassidy.

Update: Aug 4th-

I got my dehydrator!

Today I’m drying 4 pounds of strawberries, then I have some flavor grenade pluots and many more fruits:

I’ll be using the applesauce as a base for fruit leathers.

Once I dry all the melons and pluots  I’ll allow myself to start dehydrating meat  and then vegies. 

Update Aug 28th:

Almost a month later I’ve done a lot of dehydrating.

I’ve made some wonderful tasting dehydrated fruits for Cassidy once I learned the secret of a good dehydration is to keep the temp consistent. Shredding foods and making fruit leathers is a faster and more efficient way to dehydrate fruits but they lose some of their charm with their shape. 

I also started working on meats, I experimented with two batches, one at 160 degrees(FDA regulations demand you cook jerky at this temp) and one at 115 degree(at the suggestion of do it yourself jerky makers) wow what a difference! I see why all jerky sold in stores is so strongly flavored, it comes out bland and most of the nutrients are destroyed at 160 degrees while my low temp batch came out with a rich steak flavor I’ve never tasted before in beef jerky. Its amazing!

 

So next up: I’m going to try to dehydrate vegies and make pemmican.