You are overthinking this.... After nitrite additions and appropriate curing/rest time..... everything is cooked.... whether it be in the
dehydrator, sous-vide, commercial smokehouse, backyard smokehouse... It just doesn't matter...
Commercially processed foods that say, "Cook before eating" are usually cooked to 138 F in the facility... That's where the 10-20% nitrite is remaining comes from... Testing commercial products....
Excellent. I'll just do what I've always done, soaking the meat in a marinade (that also includes the appropriate amount of cure) in the fridge. But then I'll sous-vide it in that same bag for two hours at 135°F, and then I'll hang it in the smoker and get after it. That's easy!
I wanted to understand this as well. I know that curing suppresses the growth of botulism bacteria but I wasn't sure it actually KILLED the bacteria. I tried to find the information but I was just looking in the wrong places. I did eventually find an article (there was no sourcing in the article and it wasn't from an especially scientific blog but interesting nonetheless). It was from a spice blog called "Spiceography" that stated:
Health benefits of curing salt
While curing salt does not provide a wide variety of nutrients, it does have a couple of health benefits. They are:
- It prevents botulism: Both types of curing salt do more than merely keep meat from spoiling. They are able to prevent the growth of the Clostridium botulism bacteria. It does this by drawing water out of the meat via osmosis. It also draws water out of the bacteria cells, which kills them.
- It contains sodium: Sodium does more than just flavor your food. It is a mineral that your body needs for the absorption and transportation of minerals along with the transmission of nerve signals. It is also important for maintaining a healthy blood pressure.
- Curing salt helps to prevent food-borne illness: Most importantly, it prevents botulism. Botulism is a condition caused by the Clostridium botulism bacteria mentioned above. Botulism symptoms include trouble swallowing and speaking along with vomiting and abdominal cramping.
What I found interesting here was the point that it draws water out of the meat AND out of the bacteria cells, killing them. If that's true, then there isn't much left (if anything left) to proliferate in the danger temp zone? In which case, I'd think we could safely cure the jerky at any temp we want? Although pasteurization doesn't kill all the other baddies TOTALLY so does curing kill ALL the botulism? And in what time? And obviously people have been eating jerky for FOREVER so at some point we're dealing with MINIMAL risk. However, I'd like that risk to be as minimal as possible.
I LOVE science experiments... fun. fun. fun.
Probably not worth it but possibly a fun experiment. As Davomak says, we're probably overthinking this one but I'm glad I'm not the only over thinker.
In the quoted text, they talk about "curing salt". But I'm not sure if they mean plain salt, or using salt with nitrate or nitrite in it. I do think of "curing salt" as having nitrate or nitrite in it, but the thing is: Using salt alone provides the protection of making moisture unavailable to the bad organisms. The nitrate or nitrite (if present) provides an additional and separate means of suppressing bacterial growth.
This is interesting:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-salt-and-sugar-pre/
And this is good, too:
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/shared/PDF/FSRE_SS_7Principles.pdf?redirecthttp=true
One thing to always be aware of if you use a nitrate or nitrite test kit designed for aquarium use (or really, any of them) is that they may not use the same "reporting units" as most environmental laboratories (and that the EPA) use when stating MCLs (maximum contaminant limits) for, say, drinking water.
The problem is that most labs report (and the EPA uses for its MCLs) "nitrate as N" or "nitrite as N". Which means they only consider the atomic weight of the nitrogen atoms in the nitrate or nitrite molecules. Since these molecules have molecular weights that are, of course, much higher than the masses of only their nitrogen atoms, this creates a difference because:
The nitrate molecule (more correctly: ion) is NO3- which is one nitrogen atom and 3 oxygen atoms.
The nitrogen atom has an atomic mass of 14.007
Each Oxygen atom has an atomic mass of 15.999
So this gives our nitrate ion an ionic mass of 14.007+( 3 x 15.999) = 62.004
So when we report concentrations based on only the mass of the nitrogen atom, we get a result that is approximately 4.43 times lower than if we report concentration based on the entire mass of the nitrate ion.
Some (most?) of the aquarium test kits I've seen report nitrate and nitrite concentrations based on the entire molecular weights of the nitrate or nitrite molecules.
So when they report their results in "parts per million" or "milligrams per liter", they're basing the concentrations on the (higher) mass of the entire nitrate ion. And that often scares the hobbyist using the fish-tank tester because they see concentrations in, for example, their tap water, which appear to be over the EPA MCL for nitrate or nitrite.
As an example, consider the two different reporting methods for nitrate, and EPA's MCL for nitrate in drinking water.
EPA specifies (and most environmental labs report) the concentration "as N", meaning just the atomic mass of the nitrogen atoms.
And the EPA MCL is 10ppm.
But a typical aquarium nitrate test might report that same 10ppm as 44.3ppm because it reports the concentration based on the entire mass of the nitrate ion.
nitrate = "nitrate as N" x 4.43
"nitrate as N" = nitrate x 0.226
So people using some aquarium test kits test their tap water and find a level above 10ppm and think their tap water is over the EPA limit when it may be well below the limit.
So you have to convert the results into the reporting units that you are really interested in seeing. Now I'm curious as to what reporting units or reporting method is used when specifying nitrite and nitrate concentrations for food. My guess is that like the methods used for drinking water by EPA and most labs, they are reporting "nitrate as N" or "nitrite as N', as well. But without seeing this specifically documented, who knows?
So that's just one thing to keep in mind when overthinking all of this! ;)