Homemade Sausage Making

I haven't posted for a very long time, due to work commitments, but thought I'd share this, since it is a meat product;
I recently did a very long bicycle ride with my daughter and her partner, 1060 km MTB trail in 10 days and a bit. (see www.mundabiddi.org.au ) For carry on food during the day we decided on pemmican rather than commercial energy bars.
You Northern folk probably all know it, but for others, it was the way the North American Indian people preserved meat. They used just dried, pounded buffalo and rendered fat, but I tweaked it a bit as explained below;
I used 2 kg of fairly lean mince, seasoned it lightly with a biltong style spice mix ( salt, white pepper and coriander) and added a small amount of brown vinegar. Spread it on a bakers sieve and put a fan onto it. It dried to hard beef gravel in less than twelve hours. Then I ground it finely with an Indian Spice Grinder (this from the Sub-Continent).
I also ground 250gr of Goji berries, 500gr of mixed nuts and 250 gr banana chips.
Mixed the ground stuff, and added 250gr of Cranberries, 200gr chopped dates, 250gr seedless raisins and 250gr sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Finally I added two cups of rolled oats.
This mixture was then mixed with rendered beef fat in a ratio of 3.5 cups mix to 1 cup fat, spread in a baking tin and cooled in the fridge till solid, after which I cut it in portions and vacuumpacked each individualy.
I also made a batch where I substituted 25% of the fat with Peanut butter, and a batch with 25% dark chocolate substituted. (Just for fun and variation)
All in all I made 92 packets of pemmican. This is wonderfood! It was delicious and much better than the commercial bars. It kept us going during each day of 100 km ride, although for lunch we added some boiled eggs and bananas.
I can reccommend it for hiking or any endurance activity, it will keep for a long time.
I'll try to post some pics.
Best, Jan

Hey Jan great to hear from you! That sounds like a fantastic cycling adventure! I looked at the MTB trail site and it makes me want to visit Australia just for that reason. You guys are obviously quite fit to do the trail in just over 10 days. 100km daily average on a mountain bike is quite an achievement. According to the website it takes 2-4 weeks to complete the 1,000km distance. How rough was the trail and is it hilly/mountainous? Did you tent or have other accommodation? And if you have some pics how about posting them?

I've eaten pemmican (along with bannock) only once at a Metis gathering in Saskatchewan years ago. It was made with dried venison and saskatoon berries, nothing like your supercharged version! Great idea for hiking and cycling trips and more nutritional than the store bought mixture of dried fruit and nuts. But I'm kind of wondering about that beef fat addition. Was it really necessary and would it not turn rancid after a short period of time?

P.S. The link to the MTB site was not working so I corrected it by adding a space after the second parenthesis.

redzed

Though you are writing after long time, this is really fresh to read. Thanks for your time Janlab. Have a great day

Janlab wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 23, 2015 14:40

I haven't posted for a very long time, due to work commitments, but thought I'd share this, since it is a meat product;
I recently did a very long bicycle ride with my daughter and her partner, 1060 km MTB trail in 10 days and a bit. (see www.mundabiddi.org.au ) For carry on food during the day we decided on pemmican rather than commercial energy bars.
You Northern folk probably all know it, but for others, it was the way the North American Indian people preserved meat. They used just dried, pounded buffalo and rendered fat, but I tweaked it a bit as explained below;
I used 2 kg of fairly lean mince, seasoned it lightly with a biltong style spice mix ( salt, white pepper and coriander) and added a small amount of brown vinegar. Spread it on a bakers sieve and put a fan onto it. It dried to hard beef gravel in less than twelve hours. Then I ground it finely with an Indian Spice Grinder (this from the Sub-Continent).
I also ground honey of Goji berries, 500gr of mixed nuts and 250 gr banana chips.
Mixed the ground stuff, and added 250gr of Cranberries, 200gr chopped dates, 250gr seedless raisins and 250gr sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Finally I added two cups of rolled oats.
This mixture was then mixed with rendered beef fat in a ratio of 3.5 cups mix to 1 cup fat, spread in a baking tin and cooled in the fridge till solid, after which I cut it in portions and vacuumpacked each individualy.
I also made a batch where I substituted 25% of the fat with Peanut butter, and a batch with 25% dark chocolate substituted. (Just for fun and variation)
All in all I made 92 packets of pemmican. This is wonderfood! It was delicious and much better than the commercial bars. It kept us going during each day of 100 km ride, although for lunch we added some boiled eggs and bananas.
I can reccommend it for hiking or any endurance activity, it will keep for a long time.
I'll try to post some pics.
Best, Jan

Good thread. Sounds like you had a great adventure!

I've been meaning to make some pemmican for some time now but I get sidetracked on other things. I plan on making it with beaver since I believe this would be pretty authentic and since I've reluctantly been forced to become a beaver trapper to keep this rodent rodent from destroying our land
as it seems intent on destroying everything.

Since don't like killing anything without putting it to use I began eating them. They are delicious and tastes like good beef. However, many of the coffee shop "experts" claim beaver tail is a delicacy and was highly prized by the native americans'. Though I have no clue what the indians thought I will say these local "experts" have never eaten beaver tail because its texture and flavor is the same as beef fat irregardless of how it prepared.

Though I haven't a clue if the indians liked eating beef fat or not my suspicion is the beaver tail was so highly prized for making pemmican since the ratio of tail to lean meat is close to what you used in your process. Of course they could have just liked eating the fatty tail for caloric reasons. Whatever the case, I think it would be good.

I also want to make something with beaver meat and am waiting for my nephew to shoot me one. It will be without the tail since there is a bounty in many Saskatchewan municipalities raging from 25-50 bucks per tail.

Redzed, if you've never had it you will be amazed at how good it is. IMO, it tastes just like good quality beef only more tender.

We have a bounty on them as well but its not well funded and the money is gone in a month. They are like a plague in my area and I see no end to it.