Anyone tried making pemmican?

I made some pemmican bars this weekend, and let me tell you what, you could survive on them, but they taste like dog food (which is why I sent them home for my dog to eat).

Here's what I did

1)Get a buch of beef suet and melt out all of the rinds and connective tissue.

2)Dry out a few lbs of lean beef. I used some london broil cut into very thin strips with all of the visible fat trimmed off. Dried it until it was super dry and cracked when bent.

3)Shred dried beef in a food processor. It ended up like the stuff in the "jerky snuff" cans.

4)Pour molten fat slowly into shredded gound beef while mixing. Stop when the meat is just at the point of complete saturation.

5)Form mixture into small bars.

6)Let harden.

7)Try to eat.

Supposedly the fur traders and indians used to live for long stretches of time off of this and little else. Wow.

I found the recipie here: [url]http://www.paleodiet.com/[/url]

Was part of an attempt to adopt a "cave man diet"--- this isn't going to work.

I remember my third grade teacher saying something about Indians adding berries and fruit to the pemmican.

Yeah, I made a few with some dried cranberries and crushed up walnuts in them too. They tasted marginally better.

I've read that if made properly, these things can be kept for 10+ years without spoiling if kept kool and dry.

The only thing about those old pioneers and indians, I doubt they got to use some good beef like London Broil. Probably, buffalo and steer entrails. Yuck![:X*]

 Stepped-init

Pemmican
Yield: 3 cups

1 c jerky, beef or venison(dry and hard0
1 c dried  berries,blueberries,cranberries or apricot
1 c unroasted sunflower seeds or crushed nuts of any kind
2 ts honey
1/4 c peanut butter
1/2 ts cayenne (optional)

This version uses peanut butter rather than melted suet or lard as
the binding agent, which is more palatable for today's health
conscious diets.

Grind (or pound) the dried meat to a mealy powder. Add the dried
berries and seeds or nuts. Heat the honey, peanut butter and cayenne
until softened. Blend. When cooled, store in a plastic bag or
sausage casing in a cool dry place. It will keep for months.

Yeah, what i've read is the indians would sell the stuff to fur trappers. They'd kill a buffalo, and skin it out, then dry all the meat over a fire. They'd sew the hide into a sack shape, shred up the dried meat and put it in the sack, then melt all the fat chunks and pour it over the meat in the hide sack, then they'd close up the sack, and pour more fat over the top to seal it up. mmm mmm good.

Funny Thing though,I bet the Indians would have said the same thing about our MRE'S.   Ugg not fit for Brave gave to camp dogs,died two days later!

 Bob [8D]