Rendering Suet and Making Pemmican

1: The bison suet ready for me to process. This I bought from Northstar Bison. An alternative is to buy Beef Suet or Beef Tallow from US Wellness Meats. [I now buy grass-finished beef suet at my food coop for $0.50/lb.]

2: To speed up the rendering I diced the suet this time. More work, but I feel it was worth it.

3: The diced suet ready for the rendering. That's a 16 qt pot.

4: People suggest adding a little water to get started, so it doesn't stick. I added a gallon. A big mistake! I had to simmer all that water out.

5: It is working its way down. It there are bubbles, they are steam bubbles, and for all the moisture to be out they should stop.

6: I ended up simmering it for 30 hours! That covered two nights, plus daytime. When simmering at night I did periodically get up and stir. But it did stick to the bottom, and it may have a slight burned smell. Actually I gave up when it was still have steam bubbles come up. I got impatient. Figured if I kept it in the refrigerator I'd be okay.

7: Here is my new chinois and its pestle. (This one I bought years ago and I don't find it online, but here is a similar one: Reinforced Extra Fine Mesh Bouillon Strainer 8".)

8: The crud filled the chinois. Turned out the pestle was of no use.

9: Here's the pot filled with the rendered suet.

10: I decided to break up the jerky into one inch pieces with my hands. It blended much better this way. That's my KitchenAid 5-Speed Blender.

11: Midway in my jerky grinding task. I dried 11.5 lbs of bison.

12: The pot of suet is very hard. Even with the ice cream spade it was hard to dig out. I ended up filling the quart pan almost to the top. It was barely enough for this much ground jerky.

13: I put some in the glass Pyrex dish, which I was able to press down with the ice cream spade. Then many people recommend using muffin tins. So I tried that. I used my finger to press it down.

14: After it hardened I had to cut these into chunks. It was hard to do. I had to cut through hard bits of meat. I can see why people prefer the muffin tins. Looks like that will be what I use in the future. [And I have used muffin tins ever since.]

15: A closeup of the finished pemmican.

16: A closer closeup. This is not as dense as my last batch, where I put in a bit too much suet.

17: This, and the following pictures, were taken in September 2002 to update the picture album. The 3-qt Pyrex casserole I was using wasn't big enough. The ground up jerky is now in a large stainless steel bowl.