When it comes to survival food, pound for pound nothing beats pemmican. Pemmican happens to be the cornerstone of my food preps, and while I wouldn’t want to live exclusively on pemmican when things pop off, living without it seems a lot worse. Pemmican is so calorie dense and satiating, that a small piece about the size of half of your palm will keep you full for most of the day. It’s very high in protein and it doesn’t taste bad at all either!
You can survive a catastrophic situation with numerous items in your prepper pantry like canned soups, canned seafood, canned vegetables, canned meat and MREs, but I would put pemmican above all of those options. Pemmican really ticks all the boxes. It is nutrient dense, high in protein, very filling, calorie dense, compact, and has a very long shelf life. We cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone into prepping.
So What Is Pemmican And Where Does It Come From?
Pemmican consists of dehydrated meat often mixed with berries (blueberries or mulberries work best, blackberries work well too), and together they form a paste that hardens and has the consistency of a no bake cookie. You know, the classic no bake cookies with chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal. It is somewhat chewy and somewhat dense. Typically a 1 inch by 1 inch square is all that is eaten, and that will satiate hunger for a good 6-8 hours.
Pemmican was invented by Native Americans to help them survive a long, cold winter when hunting opportunities were few and far between. Nobody knows exactly when pemmican was invented, but its documented history goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. Back then, survival food and (prepping) were the norm, not the exception.
Pemmican was essential for survival in the winter back then, as many animals hibernate and plant foods like berries are dormant. As different berries were harvested at different times of the growing season, pemmican was made after a successful hunt to provide sustainable food. It is believed that in its earliest history it was primarily made with bison and elk, but beef works just as well, It was later commonly made with beef by frontiersmen and cowboys working the range in the early 1800s. It is also believed that in its early stages that choke berries were commonly used, but any other type of berry works just fine as well.
I highly suggest you make your own pemmican, but before you do if you want to try it out, here is the best packaged pemmican product I’ve been able to find.
While it’s worth ordering a few of these to try them out, I can tell you with certainty that if you make your own it will be better in almost every way. It will have a much longer shelf life, it will be more nutritious and it will be more filling. The product above would be good to experience what pemmican is like, but it is not cost effective to buy in bulk. You can make a much larger quantity yourself for less money for sure.
Making Your Own Pemmican For Survival
You can dry your thinly sliced pieces of beef or venison in the sun during the summertime. A much more efficient way would be to use a food dehydrator though. Bottom round or top round are good cuts because they are economical, very lean and the fat will be easy to trim off.
Slice the meat very thin and pound it out with a meat mallet or something similar. Rocks were originally used in this process. Lay your thin and pounded strips of meat in your food dehydrator, or on some parchment paper under the sun. You can buy dehydrated or (freeze dried) berries at most grocery stores, and we would recommend dehydrating them some more, either in your dehydrator or in the sun.
Break up your dehydrated pieces of meat into small pieces and put them in a blender. Blend it down into a fine meat powder. Once you’ve done that, blend your dehydrated berries as well. The berries won’t be able to blend as finely as the meat, and that’s actually a good thing for the consistency of the final product. Warm up some beef tallow in a skillet on a low heat. Add your meat powder first and let them incorporate. Then add your berrries and take off the heat while stirring. After it cools a little bit, form the pemmican into small bars or cookie size bites. I form mine in a mini muffin tin.
That’s all it takes to make the greatest survival food you can have to survive a SHTF scenario! If your wrap your pemmican well and store it in a cool and dry place, it’s shelf life is indefinite. It is the King of survival foods.
How Pemmican Will Help
If you are experienced with intermittent fasting and going longer between meals than most people typically do, one bar of pemmican can literally last you the whole day. No other survival food comes even close. If you think this sounds great for a diet, it probably isn’t because pemmican is very calorie dense, which is what you need during survival mode to sustain you.
You can eat one square in the late morning, and it will tide you over and give you ample energy until later that evening when you start thinking about dinner. The caloric density is unequaled and for such a small quantity of food it really packs a punch. It doesn’t have to be a small quantity, but you’ll want it to be when you see how much it fills you up and how many calories it is.
