Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Air dried cured meat and salami recipes

Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby Ice » Tue Jun 04, 2013 5:20 pm

This has always been a sore subject for me, other than locking in the pink color and curing it for long periods of time, it seems fairly pointless to me, bacon tastes just the same without the nitrites, in my experience it is perfectly safe within 3-4 weeks (had some grow mold once it sat longer than that)

and nitrites are "perfectly safe" but with the caveat that they are only safe in small amounts, problem being that just about every commercially made processed meat product contains them, and with the sheer amount of additives, preservatives, and etcetera in todays products, its just not healthy
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby wheels » Tue Jun 04, 2013 10:59 pm

Ice wrote:This has always been a sore subject for me, other than locking in the pink color and curing it for long periods of time, it seems fairly pointless to me, bacon tastes just the same without the nitrites, in my experience it is perfectly safe within 3-4 weeks (had some grow mold once it sat longer than that)

and nitrites are "perfectly safe" but with the caveat that they are only safe in small amounts, problem being that just about every commercially made processed meat product contains them, and with the sheer amount of additives, preservatives, and etcetera in todays products, its just not healthy


I disagree strongly.
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby NCPaul » Tue Jun 04, 2013 11:31 pm

about every commercially made processed meat product contains them


That's because they do not want to risk making people sick. Ingoing amounts of 150 ppm drop to less than 5 ppm after curing. I agree that many processed foods have large amounts of additives and I try to avoid them by making a lot of foodstuffs myself (other on this site do so also); meat curing is not the best place (IMHO) to cut out additives. Welcome to the forum. :D
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby captain wassname » Wed Jun 05, 2013 7:56 am

Highly salted bacon and ham are probably more harmful to health than lightly salted products with a minimal amount of nitrite.

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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby Dibbs » Wed Jun 05, 2013 8:59 am

Ice wrote:... in my experience it is perfectly safe within 3-4 weeks...


Anecdotal evidence isn't good enough. Are there scientific studies that show this?

wheels wrote:I disagree strongly.


I'd prefer facts to opinion. Does anyone have facts?

captain wassname wrote: Highly salted bacon and ham are probably more harmful to health than lightly salted products with a minimal amount of nitrite.


"probably"? Do you have any evidence for this or are you just guessing?
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby crustyo44 » Wed Jun 05, 2013 10:12 am

Ice,
I agree with all the replies. Cures really are mandatory if you want to live a long life.
I can still remember here about 10 years ago where a fairly large salami producer forgot to add cure to one batch of meat. The results were horrific, several people dead, one of them a toddler and some are still suffering from the after effects.
Please, use cure if you are going to share with your family and friends your smoked, dried sausages, bacons and salamis.
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby wheels » Wed Jun 05, 2013 12:53 pm

Dibbs wrote:
wheels wrote:I disagree strongly.


I'd prefer facts to opinion. Does anyone have facts?



See:

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/salt.aspx

The salt is more likely to kill you than the nitrite!

HTH

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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby vagreys » Wed Jun 05, 2013 4:18 pm

Dibbs wrote:Anecdotal evidence isn't good enough. Are there scientific studies that show this?

I'd prefer facts to opinion. Does anyone have facts?

"probably"? Do you have any evidence for this or are you just guessing?

You're jabbing both sides of the argument. If you are truly interested in facts, there are plenty of sources listed in a myriad of discussions on this site, and there are many sources with the barest effort at research. I expect you are perfectly capable of finding the facts you'll consider adequate, and suggest you start with the Journal of Meat Science, but there are several academic search engines which will help you isolate specific studies, abstracts and papers.
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby captain wassname » Wed Jun 05, 2013 7:40 pm

I say probably because there have been people on here who I dont consider to be paper hats asking about reducing salt contents of cures because of medical advice.
Indeed my spouse has been advised to limit her salt intake.So I am inclined to believe medical advice rather than trawl the net where I have no doubt that someone will espouse the theory that ingesting large amounts of salt will prevent scabby nuts.

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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby Kaiser Soze » Mon Jun 17, 2013 6:25 am

Ice wrote:<snip>bacon tastes just the same without the nitrites</snip>


I disagree with this bit. I've made bacon and ham with and without nitrites and it definitely didn't taste the same to me. I use it for flavour.
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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby captain wassname » Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:59 am

Oddley reckoned that nitrate gave bacon a good flavour.
It needs more time to cure and also needs to be cooked slowly.

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Re: Why do you use nitrites in your bacon?

Postby Wunderdave » Fri Aug 30, 2013 2:16 pm

I agree that bacon tastes better with nitrites added.
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