You may recall I tend to favor "lower salt" amounts in my sausage, bacon, ham, buckboard, corned beef, porkstrami, curing brines, and flavor brines. 1.5% salt is my sweet spot, but I will increase to 1.8% on some of the Marianski brothers sausage recipes as that is their sweet spot on many formulations. These guys weigh all ingredients based on batches that are 1 kilogram of meat weight, so the salt amount will often be listed as18 grams, which is 1.8% salt.
Today, I bought a new (to me) brand of chorizo in a 1-pound log and wanted to see what the actual salt percentage was. If you read labels, you know they can be tricky... but they do list "sodium, "serving size", "daily percentage" etc. So, check my math using the following label information:
Serving Size: 2.5 ounces. (seems kind of small... a hamburger is 4 or 5 ounces...)
Sodium: 660mg per serving. (doesn't sound too bad, or does it?)
Sodium: 28% of Daily Value. (dang, 1/3 of the recommended daily sodium intake?)
Formulas:
1kg = 1,000g
1g = 1,000mg
Salt to Sodium divide by 2.5
Sodium to Salt multiply by 2.5
Calculations:
16 ounces ÷ 2.5 ounces = 6.4 servings in 1-pound.
660mg X 2.5 = 1,650mg salt / serving.
1,650mg ÷ 1,000 = 1.65g salt / serving.
1.65g salt X 6.4 servings = 10.6g of salt in 1-pound. (Uh-oh, I see what's ahead)
1 pound = 454g -OR- 0.454kg.
I learned to use the metric system to calculate my percentages, but it's not the only way. In a nutshell
10g salt / kg meat = 1% salt.
20g /kg meat = 2% salt.
30g salt / kg meat = 3% salt.
To solve: 10.6g salt / .454kg meat = 23.4g salt / kg meat. -OR- 2.4% salt (rounded up)
On the bright side, the chorizo did not taste salty, and I used it to make breakfast burritos and got 13 which is double the number of servings in the sausage log. Meaning each one is only 14% of the daily value.
Is my math right?
Today, I bought a new (to me) brand of chorizo in a 1-pound log and wanted to see what the actual salt percentage was. If you read labels, you know they can be tricky... but they do list "sodium, "serving size", "daily percentage" etc. So, check my math using the following label information:
Serving Size: 2.5 ounces. (seems kind of small... a hamburger is 4 or 5 ounces...)
Sodium: 660mg per serving. (doesn't sound too bad, or does it?)
Sodium: 28% of Daily Value. (dang, 1/3 of the recommended daily sodium intake?)
Formulas:
1kg = 1,000g
1g = 1,000mg
Salt to Sodium divide by 2.5
Sodium to Salt multiply by 2.5
Calculations:
16 ounces ÷ 2.5 ounces = 6.4 servings in 1-pound.
660mg X 2.5 = 1,650mg salt / serving.
1,650mg ÷ 1,000 = 1.65g salt / serving.
1.65g salt X 6.4 servings = 10.6g of salt in 1-pound. (Uh-oh, I see what's ahead)
1 pound = 454g -OR- 0.454kg.
I learned to use the metric system to calculate my percentages, but it's not the only way. In a nutshell
10g salt / kg meat = 1% salt.
20g /kg meat = 2% salt.
30g salt / kg meat = 3% salt.
To solve: 10.6g salt / .454kg meat = 23.4g salt / kg meat. -OR- 2.4% salt (rounded up)
On the bright side, the chorizo did not taste salty, and I used it to make breakfast burritos and got 13 which is double the number of servings in the sausage log. Meaning each one is only 14% of the daily value.
Is my math right?