How an equilibrium dry cure works
Weigh the meat, weigh the cure as a percentage of that weight, rub all of it on and keep the meat in the fridge at 4 °C or below. Because nothing is washed off, the meat ends up with exactly the salt you weighed. For a whole muscle the salt is typically 2.0–3.0% of the weight.
The curing salt already brings salt
Cure #1 is 93.75% salt, so the calculator subtracts it from the table salt you add. Forgetting that over-salts by about a quarter of a percent every time.
| Meat weight | Cure #1 | Table salt | Sugar | Nitrite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 kg | 2.4 g | 23 g | 10 g | 150 ppm |
| 2 kg | 4.9 g | 45 g | 20 g | 153 ppm |
| 3 lb | 3.3 g | 31 g | 14 g | 151 ppm |
| 5 lb | 5.6 g | 51 g | 23 g | 154 ppm |
At 2.5% salt, 1% sugar and 156 ppm nitrite. Nitrite is rounded down, never up.
Each dish has its own limit
Pick the dish in the calculator: bacon stops at 200 ppm, jerky and salami at 156 ppm, a dry-cured whole cut such as pancetta at 625 ppm ingoing, with no more than 200 ppm left in the finished product (9 CFR 424.21(c)). Cure #2 is offered only where nitrate is allowed.
