Too much prague powder?

[hyphen]

Hey all, I'm taking another stab at curing some bacon, this time with a dry brine. The belly slab was a tad over 3lbs in the package and trimmed down to 2.5lbs. For the rub I used 26ish grams of kosher salt, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, a couple teaspoons of pepper and 3g of prague #1. They were rubbed all over and vac sealed and are sitting in my fridge.

I used the formula on one site to adjust the ingredients and their calculation came out to 2.8g of Prague #1 for the weight of meat and I checked Meathead's calculator later which says 2.3g. There is a big discrepancy in numbers here. Is the 3g of curing salt going to have an adverse effect on the bacon?

 

[chef jimmyj]

No...Your fine. The calculator we use here, see below, gave 2.83g. 0.17g more will have Zero impact...JJ

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[dernektambura]

When calculating ingredients It is very easy to make calculation mistake is if you mix imperial and metric...
for example: cup is based on volume measuring not a weight... 1 cup of kosher salt and one cup of table salt can have up to 25% difference in weight...

 

[SmokinAl]

Sure glad we have JJ on here to clarify these safety issues!
Al

 

[hyphen]

Thanks for the heads up, fellas. I've got some corned beef (for pastrami) going, bacon (dry cure in vac seal), and some monster 2lb turkey legs curing. Wish me luck, I'll update as time goes on.

 

[Murray]

I find it much easier to weigh the meat in grams and stick with metric. Every time you convert from US to metric you are introducing a potential source for error. Admittedly I’m from Canada and we have been metric since the mid 70’s. Maybe Santa will bring you a small electronic scale for Christmas, they aren’t expensive.

 

[hyphen]

I have a couple scales that use metric, imperial and one that measures down to micrograms. The weight wasn't what was in question, it was the calculations. FWIW all of the calculations for the cures were done in grams. Sorry for any confusion.

 

[Murray]

No need to apologize, I saw 2.5lbs. bacon, 1/3 cup of brown sugar and a couple of teaspoons of pepper plus your metric weights for Cure #1. My comment was intended to suggest that you standardize your recipe to one unit of weight. Should you want to scale the recipe up or down, increase/decrease components having the same units will simplify the process and minimize chance of errors.

 

[SmokinEdge]

I have a couple scales that use metric, imperial and one that measures down to micrograms. The weight wasn't what was in question, it was the calculations. FWIW all of the calculations for the cures were done in grams. Sorry for any confusion.

Im thinking you are on the right track.
I convert all measurements to grams and build my recipes from there. I use no volumetric measures nor do I mix imperial with metric. Straight grams for everything. This is straight forward, easy to understand measuring.