Nitrite - Nitric Oxide conversion rates?

[Bacon Wizard]

Hi,

I know full-well that this is a microbial reaction (unless you add a strong antioxidant) but the good people at the Food Standards Authority must have some formula by which they decide how much ingoing nitrites were used?

Anyway, what I'm getting-at is that somewhere along the line, there must be a figure which you can use to guestimate the rate of conversion from sodium nitrite to nitric oxide in a recipe before actually doing it.

I have no doubt that the truth of the matter would vary hugely from that figure, but where can I start with this?

Is anyone able to help?

I thought I had a figure somewhere from the USA's equiv of our authorities, but if I do, it's on a hard-drive which has gone into storage

[DiggingDogFarm]

Here's the Processing Inspectors' Calculations Handbook....

www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISDirectives/7620-3.pdf

Numerous factor effect how quickly and to what extent nitrite/nitrate converted to NO, the only way to know sure sure, is lab testing.


~Martin

[wheels]

The FSA are responsible for implementing the EU rules in the UK. The EU rules specify maximum ingoing amounts of nitrite and nitrate in products. For all but some existing exemptions this is effectively 150mg/kg.

The conversion to nitric oxide isn't so much of an issue with nitrite, it's more a concern with nitrate - the nitrat ehas to turn to nitrite before it can do its work. The conversion depends of bacteria in the meat, temperature etc. It could be anything between 0 and 100% - hence the trend to only use nitrate in longer term cures.

The latest updates to the EU regs can be found here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007 ... 778_en.pdf

Guidance notes to accompany the law are here:

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/ ... sguide.pdf

Hope this helps.

Phil

[Bacon Wizard]

Precisely the thing I was looking-for, thanks guys