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Native Foodways and Continuity - Indigenous North American cooks and later frontier travelers preserving meat for the trail
Jerky is preservation food before it is snack food. Indigenous drying traditions, pemmican, pioneer travel, soldiers, cowboys, and later road-trip convenience all helped make dried meat part of American food culture.
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Difficulty
Moderate
Prep time
30 minutes plus marinating
Cook time
4 hours
Total time
4 hours 30 minutes plus marinating
Servings
12 ounces
Region
Great Plains and American West
Era introduced
Native Foodways and Continuity
Introduced by
Indigenous North American cooks and later frontier travelers preserving meat for the trail
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Beef jerky belongs to a broad North American preservation story. Indigenous communities dried meat for storage and travel, and pemmican or wasna combined dried meat with fat and sometimes berries for dense nourishment. Settlers, soldiers, cowboys, and hunters adopted dried meat because it was light, durable, and useful far from a kitchen. This modern recipe uses a home oven or dehydrator and a seasoned marinade while keeping the Indigenous roots visible.
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