What pink curing salt is
Pink curing salt, Prague Powder #1 and Insta Cure #1 are names for the same mix: 6.25% sodium nitrite and 93.75% salt. It is not Himalayan pink salt — that is ordinary salt with no nitrite: it salts meat like any other salt, but it cannot replace Cure #1.
How much pink salt per kg and per pound
The usual dose is 156 ppm of nitrite, which is 0.25% of the meat’s weight in Cure #1.
| Meat weight | Pink curing salt (Cure #1) at 156 ppm |
|---|---|
| 500 g | 1.2 g |
| 1 kg | 2.4 g |
| 2 kg | 4.9 g |
| 1 lb | 1.1 g |
| 3 lb | 3.3 g |
| 5 lb | 5.6 g |
Rounded down to 0.1 g (to 1 g once the dose is 10 g or more), never up — the same rule the SaltCure app uses.
Weigh it, don’t spoon it
For a kilo of meat the dose is under 3 g. Weigh it on a scale that reads 0.1 g, keep the pack labelled and away from table salt, and cure in the fridge at 4 °C or below.
Limits by product
Bacon: up to 200 ppm with a dry cure, 120 ppm in a brine (9 CFR 424.22(b)). Ground meat: 156 ppm, and the calculator applies the same 156 ppm to jerky. A dry-cured whole cut such as pancetta: up to 625 ppm ingoing, and no more than 200 ppm left in the finished product (9 CFR 424.21(c)) — far more than any home recipe needs.
