Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

North America · Volume 28, The Marine-Mammal Coast and the Caribou Interior

Nikku

Arctic Canada and Alaska, United States

Nikku, dried caribou strips: dark reddish-black strips of dried meat stacked loosely across a wooden board, their surface matte and taut, a few paler cut edges showing a dense.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time
Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
Researched
Researched from 83 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed
Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked
Not yet cooked and reported

As tradition built it

Nikku (mipku / mikku / paniqtaq)

North Slope Borough, Iñupiat method: about 5 to 6 days to dry, depending on the weather. Dene dry meat given separately; its drying time is not stated in the sources found.

Ingredients

An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.

Inuit dried meat (mipku / mikku / paniqtaq)

Dene dry meat

Method

Inuit dried meat

  1. Catch seal, walrus or caribou meat, skin it, hang it, dry it, cut in strips.
  2. Dry for about 5 to 6 days, depending on the weather.
  3. It is ready to eat when the meat is dull black.

Dene dry meat

  1. Cut the meat into thin but comparatively large pieces.
  2. Dry by smoking over rotten or punky spruce.
  3. Once dry, pound with the back of a hatchet against a flat rock to soften it.
  4. Store, traditionally unseasoned, in cloth bags.

What a modern chef changes

Dehydrator-dried venison to a measured water activity

Rung 02

Method

  1. Wild caribou is not available in Britain: substitute venison, or the thin UK trade in Finnish-farmed reindeer, clearly labelled as such rather than presented as equivalent.
  2. Slice the venison against the grain into strips roughly half a centimetre thick, as the mipku method specifies.
  3. Dry in a dehydrator at a low, even temperature.
  4. Check doneness not by eye but with a cheap water-activity meter or food-safe hygrometer, targeting an aw of roughly 0.4 to 0.6, the number a peer-reviewed study actually measured in traditionally wind-dried Arctic meat.
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