Pemmican - it goes where you go!

Basic Pemmican

2 oz. cooked, ground, and dried beef
2 and 1/2 oz. lard or vegetable fat (shortening)
Put the meat in a container lined with plastic film. Melt the fat and let it cool slightly to a gluey consistency. Pour the fat over the meat and let it harden. Wrap airtight and store, preferably in a freezer if you won't need the pemmican for a while.

Pemmican #2

2 oz. cooked, ground, and dried beef
2 and 1/2 oz. lard or vegetable fat
1 T minced dried onions
Prepare as above.

Pemmican #3

2 oz. cooked, ground, and dried beef
3 oz. lard or vegetable fat
1/2 oz. dried (heat dried) ground berries
Prepare as above.

These recipes come from a book entitled The Complete Light-Pack Camping and Trail Foods Cookbook by Edwin P. Drew. The author suggests shaping the pemmican into bars by packing it into a match box lined with plastic wrap and then removing it when hard. He recommends the use of lard over vegetable shortening because of its superior flavor. He suggests that if you are going to carry other foods along with the pemmican, as is commonly done today, that you carry the pemmican and the berries separately. Lightly salting or peppering the pemmican after it cools will add additional flavor. The pemmican, like all dried foods, should be protected from heat and light. Depending on the ingredients, preparation, and storage conditions the pemmican should last up to 8 months or better. Freezing will definitely extend the life.

Pemmican has a very high food value. Made as the basic recipe above, it has 185 calories, 10 grams of protein, and 15 grams of fat per ounce.

Source: http://www.whiteoak.org/learning/food.htm