Cure Calc Help Needed, Confused for first time bacon attempt

[DougE]

Heck, most of the time, I just put mine on a rack in the fridge after it comes off the smoker and bag it the next day. It takes a little playing around, but once you hit on a method that gives you the flavor you want, you will never look back.

 

[Brokenhandle]

Looks great to me! I too now rest my bacon in fridge uncovered for 2 days. Better start on your next batch...this one will be gone soon! I recently did 33 lbs, mostly just for my wife and I but will share some with kids...we love our bacon!

Ryan

 

[Markl]

Looks delicious. Nice work. What was your process and type (s) of wood?

Had to split the slab as it was to big for my food saver bags. Weighed each slab and applied a mix of cure, salt and sugar based on the calculations for each. I was going for some maple flavor and not sure if I did this part correctly, I put 4 tablespoons of pure maple syrup in each bag. I put some ground peppercorn in 1 bag, but very light amount, maybe too light, but my first time with this.

After a 14 day rotation, rinsed and placed the slabs on a rack in the fridge for 24 hours. I have a Pit Boss pellet smoker, 1100sq in, so used a smoke tube with hickory pellets. Outside temp varied from 42 to 55 and inside temp from 60 to 72 degrees and smoked for 5.5 hours.

Will slice it all up in a day or two and plan on my next batch. Pretty sure I can improve on what got, but not bad and thanks again to everyone's help with understanding the process.

Mark

 

[SmokinEdge]

Had to split the slab as it was to big for my food saver bags. Weighed each slab and applied a mix of cure, salt and sugar based on the calculations for each. I was going for some maple flavor and not sure if I did this part correctly, I put 4 tablespoons of pure maple syrup in each bag. I put some ground peppercorn in 1 bag, but very light amount, maybe too light, but my first time with this.

After a 14 day rotation, rinsed and placed the slabs on a rack in the fridge for 24 hours. I have a Pit Boss pellet smoker, 1100sq in, so used a smoke tube with hickory pellets. Outside temp varied from 42 to 55 and inside temp from 60 to 72 degrees and smoked for 5.5 hours.

Will slice it all up in a day or two and plan on my next batch. Pretty sure I can improve on what got, but not bad and thanks again to everyone's help with understanding the process.

Mark

Nice work. Keep after it and enjoy.

 

[Dave in AZ]

Hi all. Faced the problem of converting nitrite salt (content 0.2%) and Prague powder (6.25%). The recipe calls for 2.5 grams of Prague powder. (in proportions of nitrite salt with a content of 0.2%) should be added 30 times more? then the product will be very salty (75g instead of 25g according to the calculator).
I’ll explain right away that getting Prague powder is problematic, but nitrite salt is quite cheap and is sold in many stores ....
Therefore, I would like to use local nitrite salt. according to the manufacturer's instructions, use ratio of 0.01% -0.5% on raw materials.
Is this volume of nitrite salt enough to treat the product?

I think before I'm willing to commit, you need to be more exact with your wording to be sure: "nitrite salt (content 0.2%) "... since you're using a generic product name, nitrite salt, that no one can be sure of it's content from your post, you probably need to exactly state 0.2% SODIUM NITRITE and 99.8% salt.

If that is a true content, then for 1000g meat, 1.5% salt you'd use 15g of that stuff, which would give you 0.03g sodium nitrite. 1 milligram (0.001g) per kilogram (1000g) is 1 part per million... to get to 150ppm you need 0.15g of sodium nitrite. That is 5 times more than your stated percentage of nitrite gives. So you'd have to use 75g of the salt mix, which is also what you said you thought it was... and yeah, that is 7.5% salt, about 5 times too high for most things.

It is a really weird and un-useful mixture if it is really just 0.2% nitrite, be a lot more useful at 1% so it's a direct salt replacement...

 

[SmokinEdge]

Hi all. Faced the problem of converting nitrite salt (content 0.2%) and Prague powder (6.25%). The recipe calls for 2.5 grams of Prague powder. (in proportions of nitrite salt with a content of 0.2%) should be added 30 times more? then the product will be very salty (75g instead of 25g according to the calculator).
I’ll explain right away that getting Prague powder is problematic, but nitrite salt is quite cheap and is sold in many stores ....
Therefore, I would like to use local nitrite salt. according to the manufacturer's instructions, use ratio of 0.01% -0.5% on raw materials.
Is this volume of nitrite salt enough to treat the product?

You are wise to ditch this product as to effectively cure with it would result in uneatible meat for salt content. In Europe many countries have standardized a product called Peklosol this salt product is white like salt and contains .6% sodium nitrite. The idea is to control nitrite concentration with salt percentage. At 2.5% salt the nitrite would be about 150ppm, but this product is 3x as strong as what you have nitrite wise making your nitrite salt about as useful as just regular salt. Much better to find some Prague powder or cure #1.