Pemmican

[lex_rooker]

US Wellness is just pandering to the carb addicts, and their pemmican does not last a long time - people report it goes bad if not refrigerated. Something to do with the low temp at which the fat is rendered.

I've had extensive communications with John of US Wellness about the poor keeping qualities of their pemmican.  John acknowledges the problem is caused by the fact that they don't completely dry the lean meat.  It seems that their original product used fully dehydrated meat, but grinding the meat was slow and very hard on the processor's equipment (which was designed to grind raw fresh meat).  The processor refused to contiune with fully dry meat so they came up with a compromise to just partially dehydrate the meat so that it was still easy to grind, and add salt as a preservative to help extend the shelf life, but the pemmican still spoils within 3 weeks or so unless kept frozen.  They do offer a version without salt (driven by the folks on Charles' Zero Carb Forum), but since they still don't fully dehydrate the meat, it will spoil even faster without refrigeration or freezing.

US Wellness Pemmican, especially the unsalted version, is probably fine for hiking or a two week camping trip. It's just not suitable for long term storage without freezing like emergency rations.

Lex 

[Jekyll]

"grinding the meat was slow and very hard on the processor's equipment (which was designed to grind raw fresh meat)."

That's what I'm wondering about the meat grinders in general.  They're made for soft meat, not hard dry meat.  How does a straight stick of hard meat even fit into a grinder's corkscrew?

Is there a better machine to pulverize hard dry meat than standard meat grinders?

[Raw Kyle]

The first time I made pemmican, I don't know why, but my grinder handled it well. I had a butcher at my grandfather's grocery store slice it up real thin for me, and I used my dehydrator. Next time I just dried some round steaks (which are relatively thin) and trying to grind that up dry broke my home grinder and nearly my grandfather's commercial one. Moral of my story being, cut your meat extremely thin before drying and it will probably not cause a problem. My grinder was <$200.

[djr_81]

I don't have experience with dedicated grinders but I've got a Vitamix Blender and it's unstoppable with grinding the jerky into meat flour.

[Jekyll]

Are you using the vita mix dry blade or wet blade?

[djr_81]

Are you using the vita mix dry blade or wet blade?

The wet blade I guess. The stock one that came in it. It sounds like it's grinding rocks when you start it but it's holding up great.

[William]

I use a Tasin 108, and wear shooting earmuffs while it's running; so far it is grinding jerky very well.
http://www.onestopjerkyshop.com/tasin-ts108-electric-meat-grinder-p-47.html

[William]

Pemmican calculator, so we can get the desired proportion of fat:meat is at:
http://www.carnivorehealth.com/main/2009/9/2/pemmican-calculator-zioh-video.html