Pemmican

Plains Indigenous peoples (Cree, Blackfoot, Assiniboine, Lakota) of North America — the word derives from the Cree pimîhkân; used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before European contact; the fur trade era made it commercially significant across the continent

The concentrated, shelf-stable high-calorie food of the Indigenous Plains peoples — rendered buffalo (bison) tallow mixed with dried, pulverised bison meat (jerky) and dried berries (saskatoon, chokecherry) — became the most important preserved food of the North American interior and was later adopted by European fur traders, Arctic explorers, and the Hudson's Bay Company as expedition rations. Pemmican can last for years without refrigeration; accounts of 20-year-old pemmican being consumed on Arctic expeditions exist. The technique is simple and ancient: bison meat is dried over fire, pounded to a fine powder, combined with an equal weight of rendered tallow, and berries are folded in for flavour and vitamin C. The ratio of fat to protein is approximately 1:1 by weight.

A survival and travel food — not ceremonial or celebratory; eaten cold directly from the cache, or as a base for rubaboo (boiled pemmican with water and berries, a voyageur staple); the dense, savoury-sweet combination of fat-meat-berry is deeply satisfying in cold-weather conditions