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The Paleo Mom Pemmican (a.k.a. Caveman Protein Bars)

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Pemmican is a traditional food of the native peoples of North America.  It is a concentrated mixture of fat and protein, and was adopted as a high-energy food by explorers and those involved in the fur trade in the early 20th century.  Traditionally, the meat (typically bison, moose, elk, or deer) was cut in thin slices and dried over a slow fire or in the hot sun until it was hard and brittle.  It was pounded nearly into a powder using stones and mixed with melted fat.  Sometimes dried fruits, typically berries, were also pounded into a powder and added to the mixture.  Traditionally packed into rawhide pouches for storage, pemmican keeps indefinitely.

For the paleo community, pemmican is a unique opportunity to create a meal replacement.  Think of this as the caveman’s protein bar.  A perfect post-workout meal or snack on the go, pemmican provides concentrated protein and calories in a way that is hard to find in the absence of grains, legumes and dairy.  It’s portability also makes it a great way for endurance athletes to replenish protein and glucose while training (you may want to consume both pemmican and a glucose-rich juice or fresh fruit for the added glucose during training).

My approach to pemmican wasn’t traditional.  My approach was to use the idea of pemmican to create something that was more like a meal-replacement bar (something I could eat when short on time or wolf down quickly after a tough yoga class).  I decided to include dehydrated, pulverized green vegetables (spinach and kale) to the mix to increase the mineral and phytonutrient content.  I decided to leave my dried fruit a little on the chewy side and in slightly bigger pieces to add some texture.  I used blueberries for their very high antioxidant content and apricots for their very high glucose to fructose ratio (I used dried apricots because it was more cost effective).  I decided to go a little light on the fat, just enough to hold everything together, because I was adding so much energy to the bar by adding both fruits and vegetables.  As I said, I approached this as creating a meal replacement, rather than recreating a historically-accurate pemmican (which would not have vegetables and would be closer to a 1:1 ratio of meat to fat).

The result was something that was actually quite palatable.  It is not sweet, and as someone who used to pack in the double chocolate fudge whey-based protein bars, this was a little disappointing.  They taste healthy, if that makes any sense.  And the more I ate, the more the flavor grew on me.  I used some coconut oil in my mix because the flavor worked very well.  These bars were soft after sitting in a warm car, but still held together.  However, if you want these bars to reallytravel, I suggest substituting more tallow.

Also, I dried everything in my Food Dehydrator (see this post).  You could do all of this in your oven on the lowest temperature, but I have no idea how long it would take, so if you’re going to try this, you’ll need to experiment.  I used beef heart because I love the flavor, especially for jerky, and it dries so well.  You could use flank steak or lean ground meat (beef or bison) instead.  This recipe made 8 candy bar-sized snack bars, which I figure are comparable to a typical meal replacement bar.  This recipe can easily be scaled up or down.  Also note that because the fruit wasn’t completely dried, I opted to store these bars in the fridge (but I think they would keep for a very long time in there).

Ingredients:

1.    Slice beef heart (or flank steak) into ¼”-thick slices and lay on a tray (or two) of your Food Dehydrator.  It is easier to slice if the meat is partially frozen.  I like the trick of moving it from the freezer to the fridge the night before.  Alternatively, you can form ¼”-thick patties of ground meat.
2.    Dehydrate meat for 5-6 hours, until quite firm and most of the moisture is gone.
3.    Place chopped spinach and kale onto a Fruit Roll Sheet (or two) on a tray in your Food Dehydrator.  Place blueberries on a Fruit Roll Sheet in your Food Dehydrator.
4.    Dehydrate another 3-4 hours, until the greens are completely crisp and the blueberries are quite small, wrinkled and chewy.  At this point the meat should be completely crisp as well.
5.    Grind meat and greens in a Food Processor, Blender or Magic Bullet as finely as possible.
6.    Finely chop apricots or process in your food processor.  Melt coconut oil and tallow.
7.    Mix blueberries, apricot, greens and meat together in a bowl.  Add melted coconut oil and tallow, stirring until completely incorporated (if it isn’t holding together for you, add more tallow and/or coconut oil 1 Tbsp at a time until you have a fairly moist sticky dough).
8.    Press into a 9×9 inch pan.  Chill until firm and cut into squares or bars.

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Comments

  4. These are delicious. I had to modify the recipe a little because I couldn’t find tallow or ingredients to make it. I used coconut oil and duck fat, so there a bit soft and require a little pressure to get them to hold together. Then I put them into individual little baggies and in an airtight container. I kind of have to press them together in the bag before I try to eat them life a bar. But oh so worth it. The next time, if I’m in the same situation when it comes to fats, I’ll mold them into muffin tins before bagging them.

    I think I could also use the fat rendered from cooking homemade bacon from uncured no sugar plain pork belly.

    Thank you for sharing this!

    Reply

  6. Any chance you could tell us how many calories each bar would be (if you were cutting the recipe in 8 bars that is)

    Reply

  9. Is there any way of making those without a food dehydrator?
    I don’t have one so I’m wondering if I could make those with already cooked ground meat or store-bought beef jerkies…

    Reply

    • Palm oil may work, but Sarah has not tried the recipe using palm oil. Please post another comment to let us know how they turn out if you use palm oil. — Tamar (Sarah’s assistant)

      Reply

  13. I thought pemmican was originally made to last a long time without refrigeration (which was not available). Why do these need to be refrigerated, and how would you know if they had gone bad? By smell, sight of mold? I would love something with protein and fat that would keep longer. Is jerky a better option for that?

    Reply

    • Traditional pemmican does not include vegetables. Jerky or traditional pemmican (you can read more about it in the post above the recipe) would be a better option for long-term storage. – Christina, Sarah’s assistant

      Reply

    • Pemmican is a winter food. So yeah, technically it’s always been refrigerated :p

      (Well, at least, the pemmican that’s made by the First Nations where I live.)

      Reply

  16. Can you use cultivated blueberries? I have loads of those but don’t even know where I could get wild ones.

    Reply

  17. I just made this recipe. It tastes awful. It smells and tastes like fish food. It totally made me gag. I guess pemmican is not for me.

    Reply

  18. This is amazing. I made a double batch. I bought grass-fed suet at the butcher for $3 a lb, put it in the frig for a while to make it cold and flakey, ran it though the food processor and put it in the crockpot on low for a few hours. Now I have tallow for this recipe plus a quart to use for fried plantains! I sliced partially-frozen beef heart on the mandolin into thin slices and dried in my Excelsior dehydrator, along with the kale and spinach. I bought dried blueberries and apricots. The first bite – I wasn’t sure if I liked it. But by the third bite I LOVED it and wanted more. I calculated as follows: if you double the recipe and make twelve bars each will have approximately 20 grams of protein and 24 grams of fat. Don’t know how much carb. I will be visiting family in the midwest, now I can be assured I can have control over what I eat…I won’t get in a situation where I have to eat something that will trigger a reaction.

    Reply

  22. The 2 c of chopped kale is raw? For those people who have a tendency towards kidney stones then spinach should be avoided (meaning my husband). To make this are you talking about 6 c of raw kale?

    Reply

  23. I have a silly question…if I am going to buy something that I click on from your blog post…do you get a “royalty” from it? ((I’m asking because I have “saved to wish list” several items but I want to make sure if you get some kind of kickback that when I go to buy it I do it from the link instead of from my wish list or from an Amazon search….hopefully I’ve made myself clear! :D))

    Reply

  25. What temperature do you dehydrate the meat and greens at? I want to put them in all at the same time and let them go, but I don’t want to kill the nutrients in the greens with too high of dehydrating temps?

    Reply

  27. Interested in response to Lil honeys question (sp.not withstandink?!)..Are these bars gonna last 2 weeks on the AT w/o refridgeration? Cynthia, Much appreciation to your nutritional eval!! Thx from NH!

    Reply

  28. If you use ground beef, why can’t you just mix everything together, form it into bars and then put it in the dehydrator to dry?

    Reply

  29. Can someone enlighten me on why this dehydrated meat does not pose a parasitic concern? Especially if using local country farm beef; not Organic in any way.

    I’m all for it if I can get past this concern.

    Thanks,

    Reply

    • I noticed you had not received an answer to your question. Basically you are completely removing the water from the meat. Native Americans used Pemmican to trade and barter. Pemmican was used on the long trips of explorers. A bit different from Paleo Mom’s recipe you will see similarities. I don’t use Spinach and Kale in my recipe. I just maintain my ration of meat to rendered of approximately 60/40 or a bit less on the fat. I add some salt and pepper and spices and a bit of hot pepper and chili powder for some flavor. I typically store in the freezer and don’t worry about it if we have a power outage. Here is a link that has some good reading included.
      https://eatmeatdrinkwater.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/pemmican.pdf

      Reply

  31. I have made pemmican once so far. I have a question regarding the texture. I dried my meat in the oven which took about 4 hours. Crumbled the pieces into a Kitchen Ninja and turned it into as fine a powder as possible. My final product came out very gritty. I have read someone else describe theirs as being like dirt and that would be close. I used a combo of tallow and bacon fat. Too much bacon fat I think the flavour is too much really.
    How does one get the dried meat fine enough to not be gritty?

    Reply

    • You may have over cooked the meat in the oven with too high of a temperature causing it to get too hard and turn to grit when ground. It should be kind of light and fluffy after it’s ground. Personally I never had luck with my food processor, I use a meat grinder now on the meat AFTER it’s dried and that works very well, or you could try the traditional way and pound it with a rock 🙂

      Reply

  32. Making your own pemmican is great, though if you’d like to try some that’s already made then you may want to check out our new pemmican product: http://www.realpemmican.com/

    The recipe is unique but not unusual. A lot of trial and error went into perfecting the process 😉

    Reply

  33. Hi, thanks for the article. Can you make pemmican with turkey? Do you know what search terms would be the right terms to use to find out how to make something like it with turkey?

    Reply

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