A question about bacon dry cure and the amount of pink salt used.

[misfit]

I just made a cure for some pork belly and put it on and its sitting in the fridge but one thing i noticed was i didn't use all of the cure. So my cure consisted of 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup kosher salt with a little cloves and i used 2.5 tsp of curing salt. My pork is 7lbs.
Now i've read after the fact that the standard seems to be 1 tsp per five pounds so it looks like i've used more than i need to but my question is this.
I never used the entirety of my rub, in fact there was quite a bit left over. Do you guys use all of your rub? If not, will the fact that some of the pink salt will be left over affect the finished product, like if i used the correct amount of salt in my cure but didn't end up using the entire mixture will that have a negative affect on the bacon?
Thanks.

 

[SmokinEdge]

I think you will be fine for this round. It will work, but the bacon will be sweet more than savory.
I use the EQ method that applies salt, sugar and cure for the meat weight. This way you control the sweet, salt and cure to insure safety, and repeatable flavor. For your 7# belly it would look like this, if I was making it: (weigh all salt, sugar and cure #1)

7lbs x 454= 3178 grams.
I like 1.5% salt. So that works out as:
3178 x 0.015= 47.67g salt.
I like 1.0% sugar. That works out as:
3178 x 0.01= 31.78g sugar.

I do my cure at 154 ppm that looks like this:
3178 x 0.000154 = 0.489412. Divide that by the percent of nitrite in the cure (6.25%)

0.489412 / 0.0624= 7.8 grams cure.

add garlic and pepper or whatever to taste.

your 7lbs belly only needed about 1- 1/2 tsp of cure. But I like to weigh it out for better accuracy. Not all tsp are created equal. Never good to do volumetric with curing. I always weigh the salt, sugar and cure. Hope this helps.

 

[olaf]

Should be fine but I would recommend getting a small gram scale for repeatability also only make enough for what you are curing. I use my own curing calculator but here are two

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Thurlaston Online

 

[daspyknows]

I almost bought a pork belly at Costco. Good info, next time I will.

 

[chef jimmyj]

Makin Bacon, we use Cure #1, for Flavor and Color more than Safety. If you don't use all the the mix, there is no Safety issue. However, like ANY recipe, you measure or weigh out the ingredient needed and add them All. How good is your Cake going to be if you only add Half the Eggs and Milk to the Full Amount of Flour?....JJ

 

[Coreymacc]

Thats the same recipe I use for maple bacon, just cut the cure to 2 tsp. I've made over 500 lbs of bacon using that recipe and it comes out perfect. One thing I have found with the little extra cure, it takes only 5 days to get the proper salt flavor. Which helps for me as I sell. My turn around time is better.

Corey

 

[sawhorseray]

Should be fine but I would recommend getting a small gram scale for repeatability also only make enough for what you are curing. I use my own curing calculator but here are two

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Small business web hosting offering additional business services such as: domain name registrations, email accounts, web services, FrontPage help, online community resources and various small business solutions.

www.diggingdogfarm.com

http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/calculator/dry_cure_bacon/[/URL

http://Thanks for posting that! I h...-boot recently. Got then saved again now. RAY

 

[sawhorseray]

Should be fine but I would recommend getting a small gram scale for repeatability also only make enough for what you are curing. I use my own curing calculator but here are two

Thanks for posting that! I had both those calc sites on my computer for years and lost everything on it when I had to re-boot recently. Got then saved again now. RAY[/url]

 

[misfit]

Makin Bacon, we use Cure #1, for Flavor and Color more than Safety. If you don't use all the the mix, there is no Safety issue. However, like ANY recipe, you measure or weigh out the ingredient needed and add them All. How good is your Cake going to be if you only add Half the Eggs and Milk to the Full Amount of Flour?....JJ

Ok, i was concerned that if i didn't use all of the curing salt how it would affect the bacon. I wasn't concerned about left over salt and sugar

 

[misfit]

Thats the same recipe I use for maple bacon, just cut the cure to 2 tsp. I've made over 500 lbs of bacon using that recipe and it comes out perfect. One thing I have found with the little extra cure, it takes only 5 days to get the proper salt flavor. Which helps for me as I sell. My turn around time is better.

Corey

Interesting you say that because the last couple batches i made i went to around 7 or 8 days and found it quite salty and assumed i didn't wash the belly enough. So with adding a little extra you're cutting down your cure time then?

 

[chef jimmyj]

Ok, i was concerned that if i didn't use all of the curing salt how it would affect the bacon. I wasn't concerned about left over salt and sugar

Maybe I misinterpreted. There is no concern about leftover salt and sugar.
If you measure out the ingredients needed for ANY recipe and not use ALL of it...The end product will not come out right, or be consistent. In some cases, using CURE #1, and Curing meat, not using all the ingredients, can make you Sick or KILL you!...JJ

 

[Coreymacc]

Interesting you say that because the last couple batches i made i went to around 7 or 8 days and found it quite salty and assumed i didn't wash the belly enough. So with adding a little extra you're cutting down your cure time then?

Yes, essentially the extra cure i find gives me a perfect salt content at 5 days no need to soak and the meat is cured fully all the way through. My opinion regarding the need to soak belly is, soaking is only needed if the meat is too salty. Reduce your cure time until its right, but don't go less than 5 days. If you are consistently soaking to reduce overall salt taste then knock a day off. I've played with this for quite a while and found 5 is perfect with no need to soak. Just rinse off and let them sit for a pillicle over night, then 3 hrs of maple cold smoke the next day, another sit over night to firm up, then slice.

Corey