ASK FLUFFIESAREFOOD
Volume 1 Number 8
Happy Friday Fluffherders, and happy almost-holiday weekend! I’m reminiscing about a vacation I took in the Dakotas, where I took the opportunity to visit the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. So today, I have a recipe for you, for fluffy pemmican! (Don’t worry, we’ll get back to answering your questions later this week!)
After the Gigaherds, the Pine Ridge reservation is one of the few human settlements left in the Dakotas; rather than being destroyed, they thrived by capturing and domesticating a substantial portion of the Dakota Gigaherd and then mass-producing fluffy meat. Chinese investment helped them survive deflation and the subsequent Second Great Depression, and made Pine Ridge Organic Meats one of the largest argibusinesses of the reunited United States. Today the Lakota tribe is one of the great success stories of post-fracturing America. Their domesticated fluffy herd is easily the largest in the world, and provides not only food, but middle class incomes, for every resident of the Pine Ridge Reservation.
I got to see their production facilities, which they refer to as Skettilands as a matter of policy. Fluffies are trucked in and slaughtered humanely and using best industry practices (by robots in front of an IMAX-sized screen playing FluffTV). The fluffy doesn’t suffer until it realizes the betrayal, which happens only seconds before death, and this keeps the meat naturally sweet. The fluffy carcass is then stripped of fur, gutted, and butchered. The meat and tallow of the fluffy are combined into a native food called pemmican, which is a mixture of dried and ground meat, melted fat, and (sometimes) dried fruit. The result is a high-energy, low-sugar food, often sold to outsiders as the Fluffy Tanka Bar, a handy snack that can fuel you through a hike, day trip, or a day in the office, without the sugar crash that comes from most snacks. You can buy these bars in bulk at Costco, and they’re a favorite snack food at the Fluffherders Association of America. I particularly like the Spicy Pepper bar, which combines the slight sweetness of fluffy meat, the tang of cranberries and fluffy tallow, and the spice of hot peppers.
Today’s pemmican recipe comes straight from the Pine Ridge Nutrition Board. If prepared properly, pemmican can last for years or even decades, so you can prepare lots of it at home without worrying about eating it all before it spoils.
FLUFFY PEMMICAN
EQUIPMENT NEEDED
- Large skillet
- Blender or grinder
- Food dehydrator
- Square glass baking pan
INGREDIENTS
- 1 pound undistressed fluffy meat and/or foal meat
- 1/4 pound fluffy tallow, melted
- 1 cup of dried fruit (cranberries are traditional; blueberries, dried cherries, orange peel, or raisins are also good. Some people like to add hot peppers for extra kick. Feel free to experiment! Fluffy meat is cheap, after all!)
Note: you can multiply this recipe, as long as your equipment can handle it.
DIRECTIONS
Cook the fluffy meat in the skillet. You should cook it long and slow, so that it is cooked medium with the fat cooked down. At this point turn the heat off and let it cool.
After it cools down (but before the fat begins to solidify), add everything to the blender. Get as much of the fluffy grease as possible into the blender. Then begin blending it down. Chop it as finely as you can. At this point add 1 cup of dried fruit and make sure they get chopped into very fine pieces, as well. Then add the melted tallow and blend till it’s good and mixed up.
Now pour the mixture into your glass baking dish, so that it’s at an equal depth. Cover and freeze for about an hour, until the mixture solidifies. From here, you can cut it into bars of whatever size you desire.
NOTE: Some cooks like to add other “wet ingredients” to their pemmican, such as honey, condensed fluffy tears, or peanut butter. These give the pemmican a sweeter flavor, but they can also shorten the shelf life of the pemmican.
Bon Appetit!
Ask FluffiesAreFood is a service of the Fluffherders’ Association of America. If you have a question about raising, slaughtering, or eating of fluffies, you may comment here or send FluffiesAreFood a PM