I have no shame in
saying that the constant daily influx of being mindful of the presence of lockdowns,
the masking up, the event postponements, the extra measures for social
distancing, the death tolls on the news, concern for family and friends, the
ineptitude of some leaders and governments, and some of the willful ignorance of the public in general,
to deal with this matter responsibly and seriously, are all making it harder
for me to avoid a depressed state. Today is Day 2 of a 4-Day weekend for me.
There’s offerings and opportunities for overtime abound coming to me, but I
am not tempted at all to take any right now. I poked into work to take OT
during my last 4-day weekend, and it did me no good at all in retrospect. A four day weekend happening every six weeks is
the only positive trade-off I have after my schedule had been jumbled around as
it has since the Covid-19 measures took effect. It’s (allegedly) summer, and I
should be using these days off wisely.
However, yesterday was a day that I felt I didn’t play out so
well in being wise, at least in the beginning of it. I had absolutely no energy or motivation to do anything constructive for
much of it, but I did force myself to move. I thought of going fishing,
but the prospect of facing a stampede of ticks charging at me through the
rushes and grass along the river shore near my favoured spots wasn’t anything I
wanted to contend with right then. Mid-July is the beginning of canning season for me
typically. I did brew up some Watermelon Rind Pickles, but there was no heart
in that task: it felt more like a job of being stringent to stop household
wastage rather than an act of pride of creating a homemade culinary pleasure. Something
reduced to a menial cleaning duty, like mopping a floor, or scouring a toilet.
Mid-July here is also
Saskatoon berry season, and, even though again my energies and instincts didn’t
feel right, I forced myself to try a bit foraging around some spots where I
correctly guessed that there would be an abundance of bushes - to at least feel a
little more useful and productive. However, it wasn’t very fruitful - literally.
I also correctly guessed that they would have also had been picked over already
by other foragers, since shutdowns have made it more likely that some of those without
work were more resourceful in using the extra time to snoop around for free
seasonal food. Surprisingly, I managed not to invoke furious swarms of
mosquitoes as I rustled through the bushes, being so close to the river, but an
hour or so in the oppressive humidity was enough, and I tapped out. The few odd good berries that
were left were sparse, some were already becoming desiccated, and amidst puny
immature ones that only birds would take interest in. I combed the area, working
along for at least a kilometre southward, to only get a yield of about 400
grams of berries of mediocre quality.
I tried not to allow
all this effort to become another senseless waste of time. These saskatoons
were not of any size or quality to be usable for dessert fare like pies; too
miniscule of quantity to use for jam. I found the thought of working an hour to
make what would amount to a couple of fruit smoothies ridiculous.
The thought of
another possible use for them struck me as ridiculous: making pemmican. The
ridiculous part being that I lived all my life here in this province, and I have
never once sampled any sort of pemmican. It’s now considered to be an archaic
foodstuff, heading down the road of dietary obsolescence, like many other food traditions
that have become obscured and extinguished since the advent of modern
refrigeration, and food preservation science. I can forgive myself, and I won’t
be too self-critical about that kind of ignorance on my part. Very few people here,
in fact, even amongst those who are of native ancestry or Métis, from which it originated,
have ever sampled pemmican in this modern age. When I shared this idea with my girlfriend, she looked at me with the expression like she saw the needle on my
weird-o-meter flip over into the red zone, that mirrored a conclusion that the
Covid situation is turning her poor boyfriend into some sort of crazy, paranoid,
doomsday prepper*. That seems to be the only isolated subculture remaining that is taking a serious interest in making pemmican; if not eating it, then storing it in
some bunker somewhere, where it awaits them for Armageddon. That is really kind of a
shame, because it’s something that would be an honestly true local Canadian/Saskatchewan
food: a meat preservation technique that has been used to sustain the
indigenous people here for centuries, if not millennia, but not readily adopted for our modern culture here in Western Canada. I’d like to see it be given
some more due respect as a food with some historical significance and cultural identity
for this province. I’m not saying that it has to be made popular again, but the
technique for making it should be at least given some honour, and be preserved
for posterity, like the rest of those so-called pioneer recipes that were
collected for the sake of the history of the communities of our province.
So, out
of my own scientific and anthropological curiosity, I decided to commit to this
project. It comes as a disappointment to my girlfriend, who I’m sure would have
rather preferred that I try make her some scones with those few saskatoons I
found.
Making pemmican
merges techniques of preservation that intersect the making of sausage and
jerky. It’s simply made of lean, dried meat; mixed with mashed, dried berries, maybe
with salt if it was available; blended and coated with melted tallow. After that,
it is then pressed, formed, wrapped, and when packed in an air-tight container,
it’s one of these foods that can last nearly forever (if kept dry) without
further need of resources to preserve it (hence why preppers really dig this
stuff). It is a food that’s energy-dense (without any carbs/added sugar) and protein-rich,
and also readily portable and easy to cache without refrigeration, or other sophisticated
method of storage. That was the appeal of it to the indigenous peoples, and later
to the traders, trappers, and frontiersmen in the early days of settling in
this territory. It’s as perfect a food that can be made for the practical purpose
of enduring the rigours of outdoor living and/or a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle:
be it grunting along portaging canoes, chasing down your next meal in the bush
or on the plain, or just for plainly and simply surviving in an uninsulated,
flimsy walled, collapsible, portable shelter during the worst of weather
inclemency. As a diet food, you can’t get more Paleo than something that was actually
crafted since the Stone Age.
I have actually tried
to make pemmican once before in my lifetime. It was back when I was in the
sixth grade in school. Making “pemmican” was part of our social studies class
project when we were learning a bit of the aboriginal culture and history of
our province. We used hamburger and saskatoon berries mashed together the “traditional
way”, by using rocks, but the drying process failed completely. I remember
afterward, as a result, we had containers full of horrible, maggot-festered, slimy,
rotting mush; with a gag reflex-triggering stench. It was definitely a moment where
that could have dissuaded me forever from ever being curious about it again.
Traditional forms of
pemmican aren’t just restricted to bison and other wild meat - but can also made of something that required more of an acquired taste. I was made aware more recently of a sort of fish
pemmican made by the northern Dene people of this province. The substance in
question, if I remember right, is something called “losh”. When first told
about this, I was uncertain if it referred to the fish used, or the recipe for
its preparation. The Dene method of making this stuff involves taking the big, fatty
liver from fish we call a mariah (pronounced the same as the first name of the
singer Mariah Carrey). It’s also known by the other names, varying regionally,
of burbot, or ling)**. I’ve always known it being called by the first name I
mentioned. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a freshwater relative to cod, with
a fat, flat, frog-like looking head with a lower barbel on it, and an eel-like
tail. As far as native species of fish in this province go, this one isn’t
likely ever going win any beauty contests. It’s an icky dull brownish colour, and
it’s about as ugly looking as a pail full of smashed assholes. Anyway, this creature’s
liver is mixed and mashed together with dried cranberries, and perhaps some parts of its pulverized flesh. The rest of the process and details of preparing
it is of no interest or consequence to me because I’m quite sure that I would
never fucking ever eat such a thing anyway. I won’t knock its possible nutritional
benefits though. It’s probably a very potent and practical nutritional
powerhouse, loaded with all the same vitamins that cod-liver oil supplements have. Sensible to eat in a Northern area where plant-based vitamins are lacking most of the year. The point is that its preparation/composition has the common elements as that of
pemmican: basically some sort of mix of flesh, dried berries, and animal fat. Apart
from that, I imagine and assume that the traditional way of adding some
seasoning and flavouring to food in the pre-colonial times for the aboriginal
people was pretty much limited to just using salt or wood smoke.
Getting back on
track. I decided to start this project today. There was no set method amid any
of the recipes and techniques I reviewed online, so I’m jury-rigging my own
from the bits and pieces found that accord to the materials I have in my kitchen.
 |
| Meat, salt, and saskatoons |
I originally thought
I was going to make my first pemmican trial as authentic as possible and use
bison meat. However, even a modest quantity of bison meat costs a mint, and it
would be a shame to have a possible failure result with such a great expense. So,
I opted for the leanest beef I could find: some trimmed eye of round, using about
two kilograms worth, accounting for the fact that the weight will shrink to
about half or more once I dry it. The melted tallow component is actually beef suet.
If you are already feeling repulsed, and going “Ewww!”, and are of British
ancestry, I remind you that there is such a thing as suet pudding in the
English gastronomical circle. The butcher I visited told me that there is little
difference between the two, and process of rendering it would probably be
easier. I got myself a kilogram of that to render down (using my slow-cooker). That,
plus my 400 grams of berries, mashed and muddled with about 2 tablespoons of
salt were my total ingredients. I sliced the beef pieces to about a 5
millimetre thickness. I coated them with the mashed and salted saskatoon
berries. I placed some on an even single layer on a mesh drying rack in the
oven at 225 degrees F (107 degrees C) for several hours. The rest of the slices that
would not fit on that rack were put in my food dehydrator.
I dried the pieces
until they were about half their original volume, and quite rigid and no longer
sticking to the rack surface. Using my hand meat grinder, I then ground down that
stuff and got a yield of about 750 grams of berry/meat component. I rendered off
enough suet for about an equal weight of it to make a 1:1 mixture. I blended it
together while the liquified suet was still warm. I got a consistency in the
mixture that looked like a thick lumpy pudding. I lined rectangular containers
with wax paper, poured it in these molds, and allowed the mix to set and cool.
I used a paper towel to blot off some excess grease from the surface of my
cooling pemmican bricks.
 |
| Suet added to the mix. The bowl on the right is the remaining cracklings from the rendered suet. They won't be wasted. I'll add them as filler for my next sausage-making project. |
 |
| Rectangular containers lined with wax paper to form my "bricks". It makes this operation look somewhat illicit! |
 |
| The finished product all set and wrapped up. One innovation I used for forming (not exactly traditional) was a homemade wooden press used for making sushi. |
If you are as crazy
or adventurous to copy what I’ve been doing, know this. Beef fat hardens
quickly and is more waxy than it is oily/greasy. Never dispose of hot beef fat down
your sink! Unless you want a visit from your plumber. I haven’t done this
myself, but I felt compelled to warn people who might be silly enough to try to do
that. Wipe and scrape off as much of the splatters and excess residues from
your surfaces, bowls, and utensils and dispose in the garbage before you wash
them.
My Verdict: The
process was a lot more labour intensive than just making straight up jerky or even
making sausage. I found it to be a bit messier than those processes. The
texture after it finished setting was kind of waxy, as could be expected. I
have not actually tasted it yet; I’m waiting for a bit of biochemical magic to
happen first. I stored most of the bars in my freezer except for one. That one
is the smallest of them which I kept out in room temperature that will be used
as sort of a sacrificial scientific assay, to see and monitor if, or when, any
decomposition does occur. If so, how long will it take place? I’m also curious,
given that there are sugars in the berries trapped in an anaerobic environment,
if any sort of secondary fermentation process will happen, as like when
dextrose is added to salamis that are hung to air dry and be preserved that way
by sort of being pickled in the residual alcohol internally, which also gives
them a signature flavour.
If I dare myself to make
this stuff again, I think my next berry ingredient will be some further reduction
of a blueberry jam that I made that did not set and was thence rebranded “blueberry
syrup” to recover from my failure. I also have dried juniper berries which
could be interesting. I saw a version with
honey added, another forever food, which may help with its conservation.
I’m now curious as to
how to use it culinarily, apart from just whittling away at a bar of it and
eating it off the knife while camping in the bush somewhere, or while ice
fishing, or keeping a bar of it packed in a winter roadside emergency kit in
your car’s trunk. I imagine it could be used the same way as being set on a charcuterie
platter, or the same way Ukrainians (from the old country) traditionally
eat salo (smoked/salted raw pork lard), i.e. with bread, pickles, and vodka.
Who knows? Avenues of further innovations could start from here.
*- Not so, I just
need to pull myself out of my blue funk with something novel to do.
**-Taxonomical Name: Lota
lota. That seems fitting for a fish that’s a whole lota ugly. Whatever you
chose to call it, it is one of the more disgusting living things you could ever
pull out of a lake in Saskatchewan aside from leeches. My problem with this
fish isn’t really with some prejudice against its appearance, but rather after having
caught a few these from several winters of ice fishing, I’ve too often seen many
come up through the ice riddled with little gray-white parasitic worms that are
clinging to their bodies. A consequence of its habit of occasionally burrowing in
the silt and muck of a lake or river bottom. It certainly thus doesn’t make the
thought of willingly eating one of these things any more appealing, although some
who are bold enough to eat these things swear and claim that there is a bit of
a lobster-like flavour to them.
