Hello All. I have been away from smoking for a while & wonder if my calculations are right for my return to curing my own bacon.
This is the recipe I plan to use. My salt & Prague #1 were taken from this website,
https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/bacon-curing.
Belly weight is 12.416 pounds,
salt is 4.067 ounces,
Prague Powder #1 is 0.4967 ounce.
I am planning to use 3/4 cup of brown sugar and 3/4 cup of honey also.
Any additional suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Randy.
Hi there and welcome!
Your salt is higher than 2% if your goal is 2% salt. Why is this? It is because Prague Powder#1 (Cure#1) contains salt along with the nitrite since it is only 6.25% nitrite and 93.75% plain salt.
Like
mneeley490
I also use the digging dog calculator and convert things to grams.
I use this site:
https://forums.egullet.org/cure-calculator/ (which uses digging dog under the covers) because it also has the conversion calculator built into the page like the original digging dog site used to have. Other than that, it's the same as the one mneeley posted.
Converting to grams makes things much easier for measuring, and with the calculators in that page you can convert from pounds/ounces to grams easily.
Next, I prefer a 1.65% salt level on all my curing and brining. I find 2% to be a little too much and you will be over 2%. So these calculators easily allow you to adjust your salt % AND they take into consideration the amount of salt that prague powder/cure has in it when calculating salt numbers.
Additionally, you should be able to weigh your brown sugar and honey (mostly sugar) to hit the weight amounts at 1% in the calculators.
I can't speak for what else you should do for your bacon curing but are already in the ballpark of success with what you had, now with the info being shared you can get on base or even hit a home run :D
I assume you are dry curing. Just remember that salt and cure travels about 1/4 inch every 24hours so dry curing will have it penetrating from all directions at 1/2 an inch total a day (14 top, bottom, left, and right). So a 2 inch thick pork belly will take 4 days and then another day or 2 to be 100% sure it penetrates all the way.
Then smoke how you like. I hot smoke ramping up the temp over hours until I hit an internal temp of 145F internal temp. Many others do a pure cold smoke.
I hope this info helps and ask all the questions you have :D
