Pemmican: History's Power Bar 

It's been a year, and our new Pemmican Stew (Rubaboo) video is up: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9GsU5Ymffhc.htmlsi=pJ0_9mSCcpTp_ZxP

I work in archaeology in New York and we have evidence of pemmican being made during the middle archaic period (~4000BC) here. Based on cooking sites and dna residue it looks like it was made of bear or eel, and often included acorn/hickory flour and dried berries as well, basically a meat granola bar

As a Mvskoke (Muskogee Creek) from NW Florida, my family has been making pemmican for many many generations. I have watched SO many youtubers attempt to make pemmican and cry when their attempts go "off" after a month or so. I have tried many times to correct their methods but am always ignored. You sir.. have hit upon the secret I keep trying to impart.... Use exactly enough tallow to hold the powdered meat together.... too much fat and it WILL go off, too little and it will fall apart... also the type of fat you use will effect everything from texture to shelf life.. I said Tallow for a reason.. tallow is the hard kidney fat, that's what you want, it has a much higher melting point and a much longer shelf life after rendering and we find it gives the best result. Being a Eastern Woodlands Band of Native American, we never used buffalo because we never saw them, instead, we used bear, deer, goat, squirrel, various birds, and fish etc.. but the tallow was almost exclusively bear tallow. Also, for us at least, we never made pemmican right off... we dried the meats and used it like that, and only when it dried too much over time, gathered it all together and, when there was enough, made pemmican from THAT. This information is from our songs and oral traditions as well as actual practice which we hold to this day.

"If you want to blame somebody, blame the french" That is the quote I shall live by

Today I learned that 1 elk = 3 deer, and 1 bison = 4 deer. I'm not sure that information will ever be useful, but you never know.

I was taught to make pemmican as a kid. Smoking the meat is important (aside from fly prevention) it provides a nice smokiness to the meat. My mother used whatever dried berries she had on hand, but her favorites were blueberries or blackberries. She added a touch of honey to it as well. Her favorite use was to stew it in an acorn flour porridge. Often she added fresh herbs (whatever wild ones were available at the time), and sometimes fresh berries. Good memories.

Hey bud. My dad was a a descendant of Mohawks from Oka, Quebec (Sanguingorra tribe). My fondest childhood memories are of him teaching me how to cook. Since pork is really inexpensive, we often made pemmican with pork and raspberries (red and black cap varieties), and a turkey and cranberry version with Christmas leftovers. In our household, we used the pemmican to add flavor and fat to our carbs, so we would toss a chunk into a pot of boiling rice or to a pot of potatoes ready for mashing. I always marveled at how the berries would ooze streaks of red and purple as they rehydrated. Turning bland, white mashed potatoes or rice into a tie dyed side dish. Please revisit this recipe and try it out on your channel? My dad (R.I.P.) would be so happy to know that his family history has been shared with the world

"The flavour was the 'memory of beef'", what an exquisitely poetic phrase. The High Bard of Ireland Ferchertne once refered to Bards as "caskets of poetry", this is on that level. Well done, Keep up the good work

The hypothetical Pepsi-Coca Cola war you described is a common thing in the cyberpunk genre. Corporations so massive they effectively govern themselves and can raise private armies big enough to challenge actual militaries and take over smaller countries.

I've never tried it myself, but one of the old native women here in my hometown would make pemmican with venison, suet, dried seaweed, and raw honey. I don't remember the ratios, but she would give it out to people wanting a snack and would basically use it to flavor everything she cooked. She passed away about a decade ago, but I'm still chewing through one of the _buckets_ of honey she had. When she was close to the end she started giving away everything she had to the rest of the town. A lot of her old recipes and knowledge are lost now, and I regret not spending as much time around her as I could have. You never appreciate what you have until it's gone. Miss you, Aggie.

That hard tack schtick never seems to grow old, just like pemican presumably. Looking forward to next year's segment on the aged pemican culinary creations. It might turn into a great topping for pizza instead of sausage! 🍕

I've made pemmican before and brought it on long car trips. I don't mind the taste so much, it's very much 'eating to live' and not 'living to eat' lol. I find craisins (dried cranberries) help give a nice pop of flavor. Having a cup of hot tea alongside it really helps desolve any fat that wants to coat your mouth.

Saskatoon berries are called "Juneberries" in the U.S.

As a plains Cree Canadian, former kitchen rat and Head/Exec chef (28 years in kitchens), and also currently an Archaeology and Anthropology major at University... I have to say this is undoubtedly the most culturally accurate informational video on pemican and the people involved, that I have ever seen. Rubaboo... c'mon, super impressed at the shoutout of the dish and research that went into this video. Over half of my family does not even know what Rubaboo is. Am currently in an Archaeology of Food class, and Bison is my focus project with pemmican being my edible item. Checkin out other videos regarding techniques from what I know myself, and wow... man this video is a beauty! Hats off to you Max Miller. On a final note. I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. If you are ever in need of Saskatoon berries my friend, jus shoot me a message! We jus call' em berries up here so... ahaha. jus jokin! But seriously, I'll hook you up!

As a Native American, I've been waiting YEARS to see SOMEONE do Native American recipes... But pemmican and fry bread seem to be the only thing people associate with us! But still awesome to see something done in such an awesome way!

i havent made pemican but i have read a few survival guides on how its made and most recommend drying below 150 degrees in order to preserve the water soluble vitamins in the meat. the fat ratio you have correct but the type of fat should be tallow because it has a higher melting point and will keep the meat solid in most temperature controlled climate.

as a canadian who lived in Alberta for many decades, saskatoon berries are abundant. A favourite summer eveniing activity was to go to the park, pick enough saskatoon berries for 2 bowls, take them home, rinse, and put them over ice cream, wonderful

Im Native American and this video is one of the most entertaining I’ve seen of yours! Choke cherries are local here and i make traditional dry meat. This process is interesting and we dont really make pemmican here anymore so i learned a lot about how it would be prepared.

I'm a Métis person and it's cool to see one of my fave youtubers doing a video on my culture. Not a lot of people know about the Métis people.

I was born and raised on the Canadian prairie (traditional and current home of Cree peoples) and I'm so bummed you couldn't find saskatoons. Saskatoon pie/tarts have always been a fave of mine!

FYI- Metis is pronounced as May-tee. Pemmican and hardtack are excellent for multiple day long hikes or spending long periods of time away from civilisation. It's easy to store, easy to carry and has a ton of energy stored in it. It's been years since I've had any but I do remember it well.

After seeing this in Rimworld a million times, I'm finally learning what the hell pelican really is

My uncle makes deer pemmican every year and gives it as Christmas gifts. But he adds either liquid smoke or teriyaki sauce to the fat as he renders it. Then he puts it through a sausage grinder and into sausage casings. Everyone looks forward to it every year.

As a native french speaker, I want to say your french is really good! Not the stereotypical accent you usually hear on the internet, but rather a pretty believable accent ! Good job !

In my reading on the race to the South Pole, I found some interesting facts that tell us how Amundsen got there and back without a single case of scurvy and without losing a single man. When he was trying to sail the Northwest Passage, he got frozen in. That gave him and his men plenty of time to learn a panoply of survival skills from the Inuit. Amongst these was how to make pemmican. Living near the Arctic Circle, the Inuit burn insane amounts of calories every day. Thus the insane amounts of fat used. As to the berries, they wouldn't have known this back in the day, but the berries are a rich source of vitamins, especially Vitamin C, which prevents scurvy. When Amundsen was prepping for his South Pole run, he ordered tons of pemmican made to his own recipe which added honey for extra carbs and calories. They would be eating fresh meat as well, but a huge part of their diet was the pemmican, because the men were burning 10,000 to 20,000 calories per day. The pemmican helped to keep their bodies from cannibalizing their muscles for protein, which is one thing that killed Scott's group. They hadn't brought the right food or anywhere near enough of it. I keep trying to find his recipe, so far no luck.

I remember learning all about this as a kid, being from the Canadian prairies. Our teacher even brought some to class one day and it tasted pretty much like jerky.

I was about 9yo the last time I made Pemmican with my NA grandfather. He passed less than a year later. I had forgotten so thank you for reminding me. It was always fun helping him though I never developed a taste for it. He always started the meat with a marinade of cactus juice, berry juice, some cherry juice if he had any, whatever other fruit he had mashed up (apple, plum, peach,etc), salt and lots of pepper. He always said that you had to use "good wood" for the smoking. He meant hickory, apple, plum, etc. It imparts it's own flavor to the meat. I still use that phrase when I'm cooking over a fire. He would dry the marinade and the other fruits he used for the juices with the meat. "No use wasting perfectly good food just cause some of it was used". Once everything was dried, he would pound it to dust and mix it together. Here's where he differed a bit from "normal" pemmican. He stored the mix without the fat because fat can go rancid. He only added the fat when he was going hunting. Otherwise he used the mix as "flour". Add a little water and eggs and he made some interesting "pancakes" or rolls. Add a few other things and he had a soup or stew. Again, thank you for the walk down memory lane.

I started making pemmican at the beginning of the pandemic, but I used whatever seasonings I had laying around and usually blueberries and raspberries, dried, wrapped, vacuum sealed, and stored in my fridge. I even made one with pineapple, but I use coconut oil instead of suet. The bricks from 2020 still taste fine, as I bring them hunting with me to eat. It's Feb 2023 right now.

That „bison bison bison“ part made me really laugh, very good 🤣

Thank you for doing a video telling parts of the story of my nation! I am Métis (generally pronounced like "may-tea" in English), and my ancestors were from the Scottish parishes of the Red River. My ancestors would likely have been directly and indirectly involved in the pemmican trade during the fur trade. I am friends with a Métis chef who used to work at an Indigenous heritage site and I know a few Métis academics, so if there is anything that I can do to help with your future episode, please let me know. From my research on pemmican, I found that the lowest quality pemmican was made from suet fat, the next best quality was made from marrow fat (collected by boiling bones broken open), and the highest quality was made from udder fat. I live in Saskatoon, SK, and it was only in the last few years that I have learned that saskatoon berries are called juneberry and serviceberry in other places (also, here we call chokeberries chokecherries); adding dried berries to the pemmican reduced the shelf life of the pemmican, but it was called ceremonial and wedding pemmican. I have never heard of adding sugar. From those that I know who speak Michif (a language spoken by many Métis; an Elder that I am friends with is one of the foremost experts of it as a spoken language), and you are pronouncing rubaboo pretty much correctly.

I made this with my Cherokee Grandmother for "just in case" hard times and Winter storms. We added salt, pepper, honey, cranberries, and Juniper berries. Also, when you add in the fat to your dried meat if you add it in a pot and warm it together it helps with the saturation and the flavor. Otherwise you end up with just a mouth coated in fat. Our meat was dried in our outdoor smoker. So the meat tasted really good and was seasoned. To this day I still crave it. It is how Bear and gamey meat was used.

If you're in Fargo, ND, they get mad if you say bison with a hard S. They pronounce it bizen. So I would just say buffalo to make them even angrier.

Ex Boy Scout of troop 1325 here! Pemmican was an absolute fantastic stuff we made. Hilariously, most of us loved it, and while we certainly didn’t make it with the same ingredients, it was a great snack while in the mountains

Cree-Nakoda here. Long time watcher, first time commenter. Very cool video! We still make it up here on the northern plains, but it is more of a traditional food for special events than everyday use. AND, kudos to you for eating a straight up choke-cherry/berry! Lol. We don’t eat them straight up because they are super dry, sour, etc all at the same time. We usually mix our pemmican with Saskatoons, so that was awesome to hear you share that part. Keep up the great vids! EDIT: fun fact, a First Nation dug up an old pemmican stash from over 150 years ago and found it to still be edible. Although, I would not want to try it!

You’ve made this Mohawk Canadian very happy❤️ I love watching people explore indigenous foods, and learn about the correct North American history. Much love

Bonjour Max! En tant que canadienne, j'apprécie le clin d'œil à notre histoire. 🤗🇨🇦 I can’t believe they had to say that the hairy side of the skin pouch should be on the outside. 🙄 The indigenous hunters used to herd bison over cliffs (buffalo jumps) where they would be gathered and butchered and processed in nearby camps. It’s pretty amazing to see some of the sites, like Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which is a World Heritage Site.

Likely people who eat low carb or zero carb would find the taste better, especially with berries, as your taste buds adjust to a lower level and so does the brains dopamine center. So a little sweet goes a long way.

As a big RimWorld fan, everything about this is super intriguing :D I feel like I gained a level in cooking just by watching this!

I love seeing all the indigenous folks in the comments sharing their own tips, recipes and pemmican-related anecdotes 💗

I swear I giggle each time I see the hard tack clack😂

My Lakota Souiix friend told me they made pemmican with dried cherries. She called it "summer pemmican". It has less fat and was kind of loose rather than packed tight. Her mom would make it when she was home from the boarding school the Catholics ran for the government.

our family had a recipe from a Indigenous Lakota friend that used dried blueberries and honey and it was quite good. I would go into a pot with onions and carrots and a little flour this was one of my favorite backpacking meals. We used venison and sometimes duck since my Grandfather Frank was a hunter.

16:00 - you could say it was the Pemmican Brief 😉

If it helps to console you, your cat looked very satisfied!

As an Indigenous person (I’m Métis! I’m so excited that that was also in the video) I’m so happy to finally see a pemmican video, we just made some last year, with moose (hunted) and Saskatoons (grown by myself). I’m also really glad you discussed he pemmican wars, I’d also be interested in seeing you cover the Northwest Rebellion and the after effects of that.

This is one of the most beautiful comment sections I've ever seen. So many people connected to pemmican and its history.

We've made it with blueberries and raspberries. Both were good at sweetening, but the blueberries balanced the bison flavor better.

Pemmican was also used to make a rue that was used in all manner of stewed and braised dishes, some involving fruit and essentially dessert-like. (Think steamed pudding or fruitcake.) The trick, as the video points out, was to get that suet melted so you didn't have to do that yourself in your mouth.

It's very cool to see my people (the Métis) mentioned by someone not from Canada! Also, did you know that, along with our bilingual nature, we formed our own language: Michif. It's a mix of French noun and Cree verb structures. (Also also, the mention of Sam Steele was very surprising, this video is very Canadian and I love it!)

We (Blackfeet) made this with sarvis berries or choke-cherries. I thought berries was one of the main ingredients in pemmican, but I guess not everywhere. Chokecherries are definitely called that for a reason - the tannins make your mouth feel dried out, which you can feel is either weird or kind of addictive. They don't have much flavor fresh, but they are absolutely delicious if you cook them down into a syrup or jelly. Sarvis berries are also not as sweet or showy as you might expect from modern commercial berries, but they have a complex flavor (subtle spices and vanilla with a little bit of blueberry) and I like that they're not overly sweet. They're my favorite berry!

Famous Norwegian polar explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen used their own Pemmican-resipies for their Expeditions. When traveling in cold weather fat is extremely important to Eat.

Pemmican, hard tack, and some wild veggies, boiled in a pot. It’d probably make a decent survival stew.

I can see this is already getting a lot of attention from the other Canadian fans of the show which is great! The Hudson's Bay Company actually does still exist today, though in a drastically different capacity. These days, the bay is a department store that sells upscale goods. During the pandemic, the original Hudson's Bay Company building was forced to close in Winnipeg, and now it has been given over to the indigenous people, such as the Métis who originally inhabited the area!

I’ve been making pemmican for years and I love it, but only because of my special secret ingredient, which I will reveal now. Truffle salt. Seriously. It’s a game changer. Also, if I’m feeling saucy, I’ll pop it in the microwave for about 15-20 seconds to soften it up. With the truffle salt and the softened fat, it brings out an umami character is amazing. This is making me want to make some right now.

Just stumbled across your channel. You combine 2 of my favorite things, food and history. My friend and I made pemican when we were 13 back in the 70s. We found a library book with a recipe and made it. It was actually pretty good. I don't remember how we made it. Just remember using jerky and raisins.

I'm a chef and when I first saw Pemmican it never hit me to use it for a stew, and now it seems so obvious. Bravo.

Hi Max! I was so excited to see this episode, because I am Métis myself, my family hailing from what is now Northern Alberta, Canada, and I am also very interested in Métis history! (One note though - it's pronounced closer to may-tee) One of my ancestors hosted Alexander Mackenzie in a fur trading fort on his journey across North America, which Mackenzie recorded in his journals! Pemmican is such a significant food in Métis history and culture due to its importance during the fur trade, which you touched on. Your Pepsi vs. Coca Cola analogy was interesting, but I just wanted to point out that it missed a lot of important aspects of the Pemmican Wars - see it wasn't just two private companies raising support, but rather the Hudson's Bay Company and Northwest Company were very much proxies of English and French government influence, respectively. The Métis people that the Pemmican Proclamation targeted relied on buffalo hunting and pemmican trading for not just a significant part of their own diet, but the backbone of their livelihood during a rapidly developing part of the fur trade, that saw the Métis people facing loss of their traditional land in the Red River Settlement to the newly arriving British settlers/colonists, and a threat upon their very ways of life. Of course, I realize you are simplifying a complex narrative into a couple of minutes. I could go on forever, but I encourage those who are interested to look into the Red River Settlement, the Red River Resistance, Métis Scrip, and the Numbered Treaties (the Canadian Encyclopedia site is pretty good). I'd also like to mention that saskatoon berries are the absolute best!! My favourite dessert in the world is saskatoon berry pie with ice cream! If you're ever up in northern Canada, you'll have no trouble getting ahold of them! I have fond memories of picking ice cream buckets full of saskatoon berries by the river from bushes that were sagging from the weight of so many berries! Lastly, I'd love to recommend checking out the Gabriel Dumont Institute's Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture, which includes an impressive image collection for all your pemmican-related interests!

7:08 I’ve never seen an example of “My Cat ate my homework.” IRL 😂

I really appreciate that it was scientifically named bison 3 times and we still called it a buffalo

“Blame the French” Always nice when you appeal to your English audience 😂

One of my Choctaw ancestors wrote about pemmican in the mid 1800s. When he used the word it was referring to buffalo. He mentioned they were scoping out some new territory and that the pemmican were plentiful.

This was such a nostalgic episode, Max! My aunt's second husband had a pemmican recipe handed down by his grandmother. The original meat for them was buffalo, but also venison. I remember him and my grandad hunting every fall for a stag from which they saved the winter's supply of meat and pemmican. When I was little, it seemed the most exotic treat imaginable. Then I tasted it! Ugh, ick! My grandmother made some changes to the recipe, Craisins instead of the bitter chokeberries and beef suet instead of Crisco. The end result was far more palatable, if not quite the original. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.

Next time I’d recommend Saskatoon! You might be able to find them as June berries, they grow abundantly in the upper midwest and are definitely sweeter.

I had saskatoon berries when I was in Alaska a few years ago, and they taste kind of like a woodier blueberry. My sister made a clafoutis out of them!

I remember the old Townsend episode so I love this blast from the past. Keep up the good work and god bless Max!

I’ve always wanted to make this! Also, not sure if you are aware but Weird History did a video on Titanic food 11 days ago and most of the comments are telling viewers to “check out Tasting History With Max Miller” just an FYI.

The dried ground up currents were added to counter vitamin C deficiencies when on a diet of only meat and fat.

I learned in Dendrology that serviceberries were used in pemmican

After reading the first few hundred comments... Just wow! It's amazing how much cultural knowledge is being collected here, and how good and gentle people are being to each other. Food truly brings us together.

Being Canadian with family of native Canadian heritage I've tried multiple different types of pemican and moose elk beef or especially bison is my favorite. The only one I've had that added blueberries was OK but I prefer no fruit added but there are a lot of recipes that add cranberry or other dried fruits but blueberries are the only one I've tried are OK.

You have the best setups for sponsors out of any RU-vid channel I’ve ever seen. You preface the argument that’ll ensue from someone by devils advocating, then keep genuinely telling the history that’s relevant, then bam now I wanna learn a new language. Phenomenal job 👏👏👏

Just pre-ordered your book. Thanks for the awesome entertainment for the last few years, and for keeping it up. I was scared when you quit Disney, and love that you are following your heart and rewarding us fans Max :)

You, Townsends, and Sohla, have all done a wonderful job of tying food with culture in your teachings of history, which is always just fascinating, and oftentimes provides something more tangible than just talking about wars or rulers, because food is something we can all relate to, obviously! Thank you!

I grew up in a French speaking, metis culture school in Winnipeg, jigging was an extracurricular activity, we made pemmican as a grade 4 project (beef, bison hadn't made a comeback yet), Tourtière, Pea soup & creton were served on celebration days, along with a maple sugar boil every winter, it's interesting to see this history being presented, even most Manitobans dont know the history of the Métis. Any chance of doing Tourtière or creton?

I'm from Saskatchewan where we have pretty much unlimited wild saskatoon berries and chokecherries. I really enjoyed when you ate a chokecherry. It's hard to describe, but it's like they make your mouth feel dry. The sweetness comes out when the berries are very ripe, but they always have that dryness thing. We make chokecherry jam every year. Saskatoon berries are interesting too. They look like blueberries but they almost taste like apples

We made this when I was in 6th grade in the early 80s, we were in Missouri and used local stuff like deer and persimmon. It was so disgusting that I didn't eat persimmons again until last year 😅

Living history Mountain Man here. Many of the old Mountain Men would visit one particular tribe to buy their "trail food" for the winter. Different tribes would use different recipes; dried cherries, dried camas root, dried rose hips, buffalo, venison, ect. It is always MUCH better with meat dried over a smoky fire for flavor (such as it is) but I've tried it with several different recipes from various western tribes and I have to say that none of it is much of a taste treat. It'll keep you alive in the starving times, pilgrim, and that's about all it's supposed to do. It's best (for values of "best") when boiled into a stew with some kind of fresh or preserved vegetable if at all possible...but it's not really something you'd be looking forward to all day unless you had nothing else...which is what it's intended for. When there's no game, no fish, nothing else to eat...there is Pemmican.

I grew up with Metis neighbors who made pemmican every year from venison. I never particularly cared for it as is, but when they made stew, especially with the the saskatoon berries, oh, was that a treat! You really need to find a supply of saskatoons, even if It's trying the syrup or jam.

In addition to using berries and sugar, I use dried blueberries or cranberries or both, I add about 1/2 cup of Honey which not only adds to its ability to stick together but adds quite a bit to the flavor. Also, if you double thr amount of dried berries you'll also get a much better flavor...

Your videos are entertaining. They are informative and they are comforting and I thoroughly enjoy them. Me and my wife watch every new video you make. And always puts a smile on our face and education in our mind.

Thank you Max for talking about Native American History. It is the time of year we call "Dry meat" season. Many families in my area like to make pemmican, and dry meat and juneberries (Saskatoon's) are a hot commodity. Chokecherries on the other hand don't trade as well because they grow like weeds around here but we do make use of them. Many of our stories talk about the time period you touched on. The two trading companies often used tribes for their own benefit and caused hostilities. The Iron confederation (made up of Cree, Assiniboine, and Metis) often were at war with the Blackfoot confederation.

The native people of the Americas are truly experts at curing meats! I remember learning in college that the word for jerky comes from the Quechua word ch'arki. Cheers to them!

I have said it before. And I will say it again and again and AGAIN!!!! I absolutely LOVE your videos and the work that goes into them. You are simply one of THE BEST channels on RU-vid!! ❤❤❤

Love the video! I have to try and make this at some point! As per the Babbel info and how fast the French speak, Italian is the same way, as I am currently studying Italian through Babbel and Duolingo

My mother was a cook. Specialized baker, but she didn't stop there. At one point she challenged herself to make jack rabbit delicious. She experimented for an entire winter before nailing it. Yes, she succeeded. Her pemmican recipe used dried meat and dried blueberries. The blueberries were also powdered. Pork lard was important for the choice of fat because it melts at mouth temperature, so you don't get that nasty coating of fat all over your teeth and tongue. (Pro-tip: Pork lard melts are human body temperature so it doesn't fight you as much as other fats. This is why pork is delicious. Seriously. That's the pig's big secret.) One version tasted similar to sweet jerky. The variety of dried meat (yes, some was jack rabbit - along with beef, pork, elk and deer) was smoked to give that lovely, smokey flavor, then dried, powdered (whatever was on sale or being thrown away) berries, honey or brown sugar, and lots of salt. She was inspired by sugar cured smoked salmon. She also adapted jerky spice mixes to pemmican. It works really well, but you do have to pull back on the ratio. Again, pemmican only really can reach "good" level if you use lard. If you don't, you'll always be fighting that nasty cold fat issue. She loved to take low quality, freezer-burned, three year old game meat and turn it into treasure. With ALL that said, although of course the hunters/adventurers/soldiers did eat pemmican cold, much of the time they had the time to warm it, boil it, or fry it. They talk about that at length in their diaries and letters. If anyone tries it cold, they'll understand why a hungry man would take 20 minutes to alter it before eating it. Even the Romans were experimenting to make their food more palatable. I think that's fascinating commonality we all have with people of the past. Gross things are gross. Good is GOOD. We all agree there's a difference. Historically, understand that the fat content of pemmican was important from a health perspective and it was significantly high. Protein and sugar weren't enough. The berries don't have enough sugar to carry a man through. It takes work to alter protein into energy and doesn't satiate. (Look up 'rabbit starvation.') That leaves fat, and it was a vital energy source for those hard tasks. It offers the most concentrated amount of energy we have available for our bodies. They didn't skimp on that in the pemmican. From a palate perspective, the percentage was discouragingly high. They didn't just use 'enough to hold it together.' But we're talking about making it tasty. Different topic.

Hey Max, great video but there's at least one crucial point that needs covered if you want this dish to last more than a few hours at room temperature. Just using melted suet will result in quickly rotten food; you absolutely must turn it into tallow first. To do this requires chopping the suet into small pieces and cooking it on low heat (I use a crock pot) for hours. Once the fat is all melted out, strain remaining chunks from the fat and keep cooking until absolutely zero steam condensation forms on the lid. At this point, strain the fat again prefferably through a mesh like cheese cloth if you can. Chunks in the fat tend to hold residual water unless they have turned very dark and hardened. You want a melted fat with zero water content that, when it cools, is essentially a dry edible wax. Water in the meat or the fat is what leads to spoilage, and salt is 100% unnecessary in this recipe. In fact I've heard it may even be harmful to its shelf life, perhaps because it may attract ambient moisture? Also, while cooking the meat first may kill germs and be govt recommended, it was not truly cooked originally because too much heat destroys much of the nutrition value of the beef. If you simply dry it heavily, at a temperature I believe maximum of 120 F, the resulting pemmican is litterally so nutrient dense you can live off of it alone for the rest of your life with no I'll health effects. It's cool stuff, but you gotta do it right.

Oh this was amazing to see! Some years ago long story short I decided to make my own. What I find the recipe note to use zante currants quite surprising because I DID purely by my own planing of what I liked and had around. Either way it's a fascinating item and hearing the added and deep history of it was really cool.

"So much so that the city of Atlanta is destroyed and there's a pitched battle along I-85" Spoken as someone who has looked into the eye of the horrors that is the City of Atlanta's Traffic, and lived. I too have seen it brother. You are not alone.

Max's little Bison v Buffalo routine really did make me laugh. Jamie is so greedy a cat but fun.

Now we need a meal of pemmican, hardtack, edible pine, and moonshine spiked water.

When I was a little kid, I used to go with my Mom to the mountains to pick choke cherries that grew wild. That tart astringency Max mentioned, goes great with bing cherries when you do your own canning.

Yo Max! First timer to your channel and I really enjoyed it! (That's a hard nut for me!) It's not only entertaining, (you have a great TV presence), but educational as well! Thanks for taking time out of your day to produce these vids. It's all been worth it buddy!

"Go ahead and blame the French" Which is exactly what I said out loud seconds before you said it. Was laughing my ass off on that one

Whoa, I never expected a tasting history episode so close to home! This is like high school history class. Also saskatoon berries are much tastier than choke cherries, or at least I think so.

At 7:42 I remember when I was a little kid they had something similar to this in little round plastic tins at the gas station. I feel like I haven't thought about that stuff in like 25 years and it just unlocked that memory.

at least now i understand why pemmican lasts a long time in rimworld

Fun fact: The Hudson’s Bay company still exists (oldest extant incorporated company I believe) - but now it’s essentially a department store with branches across Canada

I'm Metis and I say definitely try the stew option for your pemmican! it can be delicious! Onions and potatoes--it'll be a lot like chowder, only meaty. I used to add canned corn to mine for the sweetness and the pop the kernels made when you bit into them.😋👨‍🍳

I love Sasktoom berries, they are very common where I live. They're very much like blueberries, but smaller and they tend to have a big albeit fairly soft seed in the centre (totally safe to eat)

I truly appreciate your explanation for this recipe. I am looking forward to making it amd trying it for myself.