OK so yesterday I put together a cure for a five pound slab of pork belly. I used Ruhlman's basic dry cure with dextrose on page 39 of Charcuterie which calls for:
450 g salt (~47%)
425 g dextrose (~45%)
75 g #1 (~8%)
Then on page 42 he says if you are curing a 3-5 lb belly "it's fine to add 1/4 cup of the cure plus whatever sugar you want". So I used 1/4 cup of cure. But I got to thinking and since I am trying to move from volume measurements to weight based measurements I decided to run the numbers. Assuming that 1/4 cup is evenly mixed and works out to be 50 grams you get the following:
24 g salt (450g/19 as there's 19 one quarter cups in 950 grams of the total cure weight)
22 g sugar (425/19)
4 g #1 (75/19)
and since 5 lbs of meat = 2275 grams my ratios land at:
1.04% salt
0.98% sugar
0.17% #1
This is woefully inadequate if I am doing these calculations right.
Should I correct by adding another 25 grams of the cure which would bring me up to the following ratio:
1.56% salt
1.48% sugar
0.26% #1
and then add another 65 grams of salt to get me to 2.0%?
Wondering if I let this go as is, fix it early on, or just what flexibility I have, or heck is my math all wrong?
Any thoughts are appreciated.
Scott
450 g salt (~47%)
425 g dextrose (~45%)
75 g #1 (~8%)
Then on page 42 he says if you are curing a 3-5 lb belly "it's fine to add 1/4 cup of the cure plus whatever sugar you want". So I used 1/4 cup of cure. But I got to thinking and since I am trying to move from volume measurements to weight based measurements I decided to run the numbers. Assuming that 1/4 cup is evenly mixed and works out to be 50 grams you get the following:
24 g salt (450g/19 as there's 19 one quarter cups in 950 grams of the total cure weight)
22 g sugar (425/19)
4 g #1 (75/19)
and since 5 lbs of meat = 2275 grams my ratios land at:
1.04% salt
0.98% sugar
0.17% #1
This is woefully inadequate if I am doing these calculations right.
Should I correct by adding another 25 grams of the cure which would bring me up to the following ratio:
1.56% salt
1.48% sugar
0.26% #1
and then add another 65 grams of salt to get me to 2.0%?
Wondering if I let this go as is, fix it early on, or just what flexibility I have, or heck is my math all wrong?
Any thoughts are appreciated.
Scott