Hello all, great to be here.

[loonytooner]

Joined abut a week ago or so. Been reading some great threads. Some of you guys are masters of the smoke machines and I now know, I have come to the right place. I started getting into smoking a couple of years ago. I bought a well use little chief of a buddy. $20 to start learning.LOL
I have since bought a new little chief, as the old was well, old. Top loader one. I now have the front load. I smoke fish mainly, but have ventured into pork ( bacon is my fav ), beef and this past weekend,I did my first turkey breast. To my surprise, it turned out pretty darn good. I hope to learn alot here. I have yet to use pink salt or pruage powder,as this stuff scares me to be honest. My fish and meats never last long, ( gets eaten up pretty fast ) so never really needed it. One of my favorite things I have come up with is,bacon ribs. Oh it is so good. I am always open to new ideas and critiziam is always taken, as I am still a newbie.
Anyhoo, that's my intro.

Here are a few of my smokes.

Brian

 

[TNJAKE]

Welcome from Tennessee. Food looks great

 

[6GRILLZNTN]

Welcome from Middle TN!

 

[smokerjim]

welcome from pa, ya got some good looking stuff there, really no need to be afraid of curing salt if used properly , any questions just ask away

 

[loonytooner]

Thanks all.
I am from Ontario Canada.
It,s getting a bit tough up here now to do a full smoke with the chief with these temps, so I mainly get the smoke needed, then put in the oven to complete the process.

 

[kruizer]

Welcome to SMF from Minnesota.

 

[JCAP]

Welcome to the best place on the internet from PA!

 

[SmokinAl]

Welcome to SMF!
Good looking Q there!
Al

 

[JC in GB]

Welcome from Wisconsin.

To help dissipate your trepidation about curing salt, I suggest starting to do all your seasoning according to weight measurements.

Adding curing salt will be very intuitive once you get used to adding things by weight.

For example: Most meats I process I like a 1.75% salt content. Cured or not. That is my personal magic number that I shoot for. That gives me a pleasant amount of salt flavor.

Say I was dry curing 3 kg of bacon and I wanted a 1.75% salt content: 3000 * 0.0175 = 52.5 grams of salt.

Now, if I wanted to use #1 curing salt, I would use 2.5 grams of cure per kg of meat weight. 3 * 2.5 = 7.5 grams of cure #1

To maintain the 1.75% salt content: 52.5 - 7.5 = 45 grams salt and 7.5 grams cure #1

Now to finish your bacon cure, you have to determine how sweet you want it. Let us say we wanted 2% sugar content in our finished product: 3000 * 0.02 = 60 grams of sugar

There you are, a basic recipe for dry cured bacon.

It all comes down to measurement and math. You will do fine if you follow safe production procedures.

There are plenty of experienced resources on this forum to help you avoid trouble.

Happy smoking.

JC