Making a cover for the mess kit with a SPEEDY STITCHER was a lot more arduous than I expected. I need to learn how to sew. But I did learn a lot. First I needed to make leather thimbles to protect my fingers
spicy curried beef stew , with onions, celery, loads of garlic and madras Indian simmering sauce. made it in my Afghan pressure cooker, until the meat cubes fell apart into strands. Simmered it down thick , almost paste like, transferred it to parchment paper on the dehydrator trays and dehydrated it for 12 hours until bone dry / very crumbly this will be vacuum sealed into portions , to add to instant noodle’s or pasta or rice when hiking
Well..here we are again. This looks delicious. Where did it come from? Pretty sure theres a story to it over in my Adventure thread. Drop by for a look if you want.
Another batch of spicy curried beef in the works…… cleaned out the freezer of old meat , about 10 lbs worth of steak, Chuck, super lean ground, brisket. Some marinated Chuck cubes in vacuum bags. All trimmed of fat, chunked up, pressure cooked in their own juices in batches to tenderize , with loads (literally cups ) of cumin, coriander, pepper, Himalayan salt , paprika, chili powder, garlic, onion, stock , then slow simmered for a few hours more until the meat fell apart and the sauce got super thick Spread out onto 4 trays in the dehydrator….. once dried I’ll pound into granules and vacuum seal for the trail, to add to instant noodles , dried soups, rice, pasta etc some will be finely powdered , tamped solid into molds and I’ll soak with tallow to make pemmican. ( not the traditional way of drying meat and pounding into powder, but way more flavourful) update: 10 lbs of mixed beef, fully dehydrated first batch from last week, about 2 cups worth of beef, about to be powderized in the 2000 watt blender. post blend - about 5 seconds . ready to be pressed into a mold and soaked in melted tallow
Pemmican - Part 2 Entire 10 lb of mixed beef cuts, pressure cooked tender, long slow simmered with loads of spices , herbs, onions, celery - dehydrated down to about 4 lbs of dried product. Time to blend into powder. This was time consuming , over an hour of constant stirring, dumping into bowl, sifting thru the 2.5 mm placer fines sieve, repeating over and over until the whole batch was powderized . Then into the oven on low , with door cracked open, to dry out the powder 1000%
Pemmican - Part 3 : fruit chopped up apricots, cranberries, currants with the RON HOOD / TOPS KNIVES ATAX. Figured it was a fitting tool since I was making Pemmican I def need a 3’ x 3’ chopping block soon if I’m going to keep making stuff like this About 3 lbs of diced apricots/ cranberries / currants Two dehydrator trays full now we wait I might add pineapple , dried apples, bananas too. obviously I’m not storing the pemmican for years, it’ll pretty much be eaten every hike. $35 of grass fed beef tallow. And that was from a butcher….. Update: dried fruit pulverized into granules - letting the granules dry out more in the warm oven - might run them thru the blender again
On today's episode of Krypto's barbeque we make a da meatball..... Wait what? Smokin meatballs? Yeah buddy! Forgot the eggs and the parmesan in the fridge till after the pic. Everybody's all mixed together makin friends. Meat into ball form. Smoked and tossed into sauce. Look at that nice little smoke ring.
Good evening my culinary compadres! Tonight I try to recreate something I had years ago- Chimichurri! I had this zesty, fresh, herbal, and delicious sauce on a skirt steak. I’ve tried making this once but it fell flat. My suspicion was that I didn’t salt it enough and didn’t use a flavorful olive oil. Since then, I’ve learned some cool things from the show SALT FAT ACID HEAT with Samin Nosrat. I learned that just following recipes without deliberate control of those 4 elements, will make my food fall flat. So tonight, it’s “Man vs. Chimichurri Part 2” The ingredients: Flat lead parsley Flavorful olive oil, the kind foe sauces and marinades Shallots Garlic Chili flakes Oregano Red wine vinegar Salt and pepper When I went to the market, I didn’t see any food steak options so I went with salmon. I seasoned the salmon with just regular olive oil and salt and pep, plus a lemon. I put my gf in charge of the baking and she hit the temperature perfectly- 125 degrees When I tasted the marinade, it was really sour and not enough salt. I added salt and hoped for the best. Turns out, the marinade was just right when it was eaten with the fish. Really yummy dinner.
Pemmican - Part 5 FINALLY ready to mix the meat powder, granulated fruit & beef tallow together Ingredients assembled, plus a reeb 1 cup meat powder + 1 cup granulated fruit, mixed dry melting grass fed free range beef tallow Pouring melted tallow Mixing poured into mess tin , hand pressed then tamped with a flat tool Batch 2 & 3 Now we wait for the tallow to harden I think going forward, I would mix in a glass blender , heated hot with boiling water , dump the water , dry the blender , add the hot melted tallow, fruit granules, and beef powder , then high speed mix until ultra smooth, then pour into the molds. Would yield a stronger, tighter grain , harder food bar than hand mixing I’d also probably use just dried blueberries for the fruit….. as they actually powderize into a dusty powder - where’s the cranberries / apricots stay fairly chunky/ sticky
Pemmican - Part 6 Bars cooled/hardened , mess tin warmed in pan of hot water to release bar, product wrapped. very granular / grainy texture. Breaks apart a little too easily . Tastes great. Spicy, East Indian curry beef flavour, slightly fatty, neutral fat taste, almost zero fruit/sweetness taste. I ate about a tablespoon of crumbled bar…..that was about two hours ago. I feel zero need to eat any food since , just don’t feel hungry at all I experimented with my theory on using a boiling water heated blender jar, water drained/blender dried(this will keep the fat from cooling so the blender can mix the slurry superfine) , added the meat and fruit granules, then very hot melted tallow. Blended on high speed for 3 minutes then poured into mess tin. very very smooth fine grain mix….. will be interesting to see if the bars are more robust / stronger (non crumble) there is a slight amount of ingredients waste using this method (I have no silicone spatulas) previous (first) batch. Very granular High speed hot blended batch (2nd) note how it’s very smooth finely grained looking I might just reprocess the first 3 bars using the hot blender method….. it occurred to me that Pemmican is the literally the worlds first and oldest highly processed food (but extremely healthy) I’m also really curious to recreate this using smoked dried fish…. Bones and all Huge amounts of respect and a shout out to Cree Elder Sandy Masty over at CreeFoodTV , who gave me the knowledge/ insight/ instructions on how pemmican was / is traditionally made. I’m absolutely fascinated by traditional First Nations and Inuit cooking and immerse myself as much as possible in their culture and food and traditions. I would love to do a hunt, process a moose / elk / Cariboo, smoke the meat, render some bear fat, collect and dry wild blueberries and make pemmican true to tradition , but sadly , living (stuck) in the city , it’s extremely hard to do so. I know my pemmican recipe was not really made properly in the traditional sense, but as a foodie I can’t help but adapt/ experiment. I think I was highly successful in my recipe, adding an East Indian/ South Asian spicy flavour fusion to traditional pemmican I know I’ll sure enjoy it on my adventures, and I hope I inspire others to experiment with food!
