Question about Bacon cure recipe?

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rnmac

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May 24, 2018
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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.
 
I do everything in grams...
12.416 lbs. is 5631.8 grams. The percentages are calculated off of this weight.
Cure #1 is a given at .25% so that will be 14.1 grams or .25% x 5631.8g
I like a total salt content of 1.5% including cure #1. So 1.25% salt is 70.4 grams.
For sugar, I'm usually .75% so that would be 42.2 grams.

For lbs. and ounces...
12.416 is 198.7 oz.
Cure #1 at .25% is .5 oz.
Salt at 1.25% is 2.48 oz.
Sugar at .75% is 1.49 oz.

Never used honey so no help there...

Others like more salt and sugar, some like less. This is the recipe I always use.
 
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 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
 
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I do cuing only in metric because the calculations are much more simple. I also just do my own calculations rather than using an online one. Calculating percentages is pretty basic, especially using grams.

Your 12.416 pound slab is 5632 grams.

My formula for bacon is:
0.25% cure%1 (this never changes)
1.5% salt
0.75% sugar

So given the weight of your slab,

14.8 grams cure#1
84.48 grams salt (non-iodized)
42.24 grams sugar
 
Last edited:
Your sugars look fine, i use maple syrup instead of honey but the amounts are pretty much exactly what I use. The info the fellows gave you about cure is solid, im not going to add anything there.

Corey
 
Good morning all. Wow! I wasn't expecting such a quick reply from so many. I have to say a big THANK YOU for all this help. I decided to switch to metric.

These are the amounts that I am planning on using this morning.
Belly weight is 5632 grams
15 grams Prague powder #1
86 grams Pickling salt
44 grams Brown Sugar.
Volume wise it doesn't look like very much but I guess i'll find out.
 
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Good morning all. Wow! I wasn't expecting such a quick reply from so many. I have to say a big THANK YOU for all this help. I decided to switch to metric.

These are the amounts that I am planning on using this morning.
Belly weight is 5632 grams
15 grams Prague powder #1
86 grams Pickling salt
44 grams Brown Sugar.
Volume wise it doesn't look like very much but I guess i'll find out.
Enjoy the ride. You have been given very good advice and you will be surprised at the quality of the results. Your bacon game just went way up.

Also you may want to adjust the salt or sugar after this run, but do it in metric and keep it in percentage. Once dialed in the process is 100% repeatable if you write down the recipe in percentages to meat weight. This way next time you do a bacon slab and it weighs 3500g or maybe 9000g if you apply the recipe by percentages it will 100% always finish the same.

The precision of metric in curing is game changer (same in sausage making).

1 pound has 16oz.
1 pound has 454 grams.

1 Kg is 2.2 lbs.
1 Kg has 1000g

As you see the precision of metric is much tighter than Imperial scale.
Plus metric scale is in 10’s so it counts just like money, instead of being in 16s, it’s the difference of 1/16 of an inch to 1/450th of an inch.

On scale if I have 1000g (1Kg) meat, and I want to apply 1.5% salt, you move the decimal one place to the right. This is 15g. No calculator needed.
For cure #1 at .25%, again move the decimal one place to the right 2.5g. Obviously this is for even values of meat weight in Kg but once you adjust it’s much more simple and again 100% repeatable. Enjoy.
 
Math looks good to me and yes, it does not look like much and kinda shocking how little cure is needed.

FYI 1lb=454g. Maybe since I am a car guy that clicked with me and made the transition to metric a snap.
 
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"Pure mathematics cannot lie." Dr. Who

Here is the method I use for bacon and it produces great results. Just some more info for you to process. :emoji_yum:


JC :emoji_cat:
 
The FINE folks here on SMF really know their stuff when it comes to bacon. It's almost to the point now where the recipe has been standardized to:
  • 1.5% salt
  • .25% cure #1
  • .75% sugar
It's the guidance I got from this site and I've been making bacon like this for some time now. Like you I'm a bit amazed by how little salt, sugar, cure you need to make it. It doesn't seem like much when you're putting it on, but it works!

Enjoy the ride and be sure to post pictures!
 
Agree with the others. your numbers look good.

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