Pemmican questions!

[Guest guest]

At long last I've just started making my first batch of pemmican, and even

now, just in the very first stage, I have a ton of questions. Surprise

surprise. <g>

I'm about halfway through rendering the suet, but I'm not entirely sure I'm

doing it right. A few months ago I got 15-20lbs of pastured buffalo suet,

which I kept frozen until now. It came in four big ziploc bags, and what

I'm doing is cutting a bag full of suet into small chunks with some kitchen

shears that simply aren't quite up to the task and then rendering the whole

bag's worth at once in a large pot on a medium flame. This takes hours,

but leaves me with somewhere around 5 cups of rendered fat, which is golden

in color when liquid and a slightly pale yellow when solid.

I'm wondering whether I'm using too high a heat, as the liquid fat in the

pot bubbles pretty much the whole time. I wouldn't call it a full boil,

but it's definitely at least simmering. Also, the cracklings are kind of

burnt, or at least thoroughly browned. Is the burning/browning of the

cracklings what's giving the rendered fat its golden yellow color? Is that

a bad thing? Or is the fat yellow because it's from pastured animals,

which is a good thing? And am I destroying nutrients by rendering the fat

at too high a temperature?

I'd appreciate any advice from experienced fat renderers and/or pemmican

makers!

TIA!

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