Wifezilla
Low-Carb Queen - RIP: 1963-2021
"I know how to dry meat because I have dried lots of meat myself... Before my time they never used salt, but in my time, what we did was make a rack, sometimes two, even for one moose... Lots of times I would take the whole hind-quarter, cut the bone out, and then cut it fine (thin) and make it (the sheet of meat) as big as I can. You can, you know, make one sheet out of one hindquarter, if you watch it pretty close. It was very seldom I could do that. Lots of times I would cut it in two. Then I would cover the whole rack with that, laying it over (like a blanket). Before I did that I put salt on it on both sides.
Then you made a little smoky fire. In the heat and the sun, it dried very fast. It is better you know, if you cut it very thin than when you cut it thick. With the smoke and the salt, it can be well cured, and it is very good.
Then lots of times we would put that meat on a raw hide on the ground and pound it to make pemmican out of it...
We never threw anything of the moose away, hardly. We even ate the eyes - the head and everything. We used to boil that too... it made good headcheese. We even took the hoofs and cleaned the meat out. Then the bones, we took and boiled them and took the grease. That was really good lard. All of the bones we broke and boiled them in a big pail and made - in Cree we call it [Cree word unintelligible on tape] bone grease in English."
http://www.calverley.ca/Part01-FirstNations/01-046.html
Then you made a little smoky fire. In the heat and the sun, it dried very fast. It is better you know, if you cut it very thin than when you cut it thick. With the smoke and the salt, it can be well cured, and it is very good.
Then lots of times we would put that meat on a raw hide on the ground and pound it to make pemmican out of it...
We never threw anything of the moose away, hardly. We even ate the eyes - the head and everything. We used to boil that too... it made good headcheese. We even took the hoofs and cleaned the meat out. Then the bones, we took and boiled them and took the grease. That was really good lard. All of the bones we broke and boiled them in a big pail and made - in Cree we call it [Cree word unintelligible on tape] bone grease in English."
http://www.calverley.ca/Part01-FirstNations/01-046.html