Nomad

Drying meat ....
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x6932e/X6932E02.htm

dwight55

I didn't have time ro read it all, . . . but the "perusal" of it looked good.

Thanks, Nomad,........

May God bless,
Dwight

huntinghawk

Old time way to make the brine is to add salt to the water till a raw egg floats.

Sweets

Salt doesn't have to be used- you make Jerky in other words. Back before it was so easy to buy, I used to cut and dry thin strips of round steak and hanging them on a set of cookie cooling racks. I've used both natural drying and slow oven heat, using the oven gave the stuff a brittle consistency, jerky with a tendency to shatter, but maybe I was inpatient. Also, I experimented with various marinades I got out of books and Field and Stream, etc. The most successful ones involved soya and worcestershire sauces, garlic powder and things like that. Flavouring isn't really necessary, and not even important if you're going to be hungry while eating the stuff. Anyway, it can be a lot of work for what you get if you only want trail food, but there's no reason you couldn't preserve all of the meant from a pretty large animal the same way if you had a good knife, enough time, and a dry place to put the meat while 'jerking' it. Also, you have to be able to KEEP dried jerky meat dry or it'll go bad, sometimes quickly- I once lost quite an amount of authentic South African biltong to green mold by forgetting it for a week or so in my car trunk during a wet spring.

PhrogRider

As long as the subject is dried & preserved meat, has anyone ever made or tried pemmican? It keeps forever, the fur trappers lived on it and British soldiers could supposedly march for >24 hours on an iron ration. It would appear to be an ideal SHTF ration, but I can't decide whether I'm fascinated or repulsed by the idea of it.

Sweets

More of a traditional Canadian trapper's and hunter's food, haven't heard of British troops using it here (they seem to have mostly preferred to starve on British rations rather than try anything new) but for sure was a staple of winter and polar travel and exploration (but again the Brits never took it to the south pole). However, pemmican, being made with a LOT of fat, is pretty strictly a cold weather food; it wouldn't even stand up well to central heating, at least not using the receipe I tried one time; I mean the fat would melt and run unless kept in good containers. Fat is of course on the modern banned foods list but in times of extreme stress and starvation, I for one would not care if only because in those conditions nobody is going to live to a very old age anyway. Two other scraps of pemmican tirvia: it isn't digestible at high altitudes, also because of the fat. There was a company that sold 'fruit pemmican' a few decades back, don't see it around anymore.

Sweets

It's also worth noting that in the early days of pemmican, meaning those of the native peoples up to maybe the 1800s, edible fat was a rare and highly sought after commodity. Pemmican was like putting it in the bank, or travellers cheques if you will.