Low sodium bacon

[Fueling Around]

I'm very new to all of this and have been extremely pleased with the outcome of my bacon making experiences thus far using the .25%, 1.5%, .75% recipe. If I wanted to lower the salt to 1.25%, do I need additional curing time beyond the 10-14 days?

Absolutely YES. Go 3 weeks minimum.
I was planning on 3-4 weeks last fall with my 1% batch, but with complications it went almost 7 weeks.
No sign of bad meat and I haven't poisoned the couple dozen people that have sampled it.

 

[SmokinEdge]

I'm very new to all of this and have been extremely pleased with the outcome of my bacon making experiences thus far using the .25%, 1.5%, .75% recipe. If I wanted to lower the salt to 1.25%, do I need additional curing time beyond the 10-14 days?

Remember Charles that you are .25% and 1.5% all in salt, that’s 1.75% sodium. So if you dip to 1.25% salt and .25% cure, that’s all in 1.5% sodium, and your 14 day cure time is still fine.

However if you cut salt to 1.0% and go .25% cure you are then all in at 1.25% sodium and yes add 7 days at that point.

Absolutely YES. Go 3 weeks minimum.
I was planning on 3-4 weeks last fall with my 1% batch, but with complications it went almost 7 weeks.
No sign of bad meat and I haven't poisoned the couple dozen people that have sampled it.

John, you can also trim that cure back to at least .20% it’s just a half percent but is perfectly fine. I’ll run some numbers for you, but you really only need about 100ppm nitrite to make a beautiful product.

 

[Fueling Around]

...
John, you can also trim that cure back to at least .20% it’s just a half percent but is perfectly fine. I’ll run some numbers for you, but you really only need about 100ppm nitrite to make a beautiful product.

Thanks, Eric.
I've been thinking about that with the longer cure times. It will be a balance with the reduced sodium driving the nitrite into the meat.
My last dry cure was 2 pork tenderloins and they were perfect. Added your black forest rub to one of them and my wife was a happy camper.

Commercial bacon is around 125 ppm nitrite and erythorbate and very wet injected with a very short curing time.
Maybe the starting point?

 

[SmokinEdge]

Thanks, Eric.
I've been thinking about that with the longer cure times. It will be a balance with the reduced sodium driving the nitrite into the meat.
My last dry cure was 2 pork tenderloins and they were perfect. Added your black forest rub to one of them and my wife was a happy camper.

Commercial bacon is around 125 ppm nitrite and erythorbate and very wet injected with a very short curing time.
Maybe the starting point?

Commercial is injected and limited to 120ppm and yes must use a cure accelerator such as erythorbate. But with a dry rub, you can also shave some of that cure number off, that’s just to cut a little more sodium if you want. But you certainly don’t have to run cure at 156ppm. You can go down around 70-80ppm but with your already low salt, I’d keep it around 100ppm and north. May help your salt / sodium struggle a little.

And since it’s a dry rub, no erythorbate needed.

 

[Gonna Smoke]

So if you dip to 1.25% salt and .25% cure, that’s all in 1.5% sodium, and your 14 day cure time is still fine.

Yes Eric, a total sodium reduction of .25% is what I was asking about. Reading about the low sodium bacon and increased cure times had me wondering...