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Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:10 pm**

I'm going to give the recipe at the link below a go soon but I don't have any cure #1 at the moment. I do have some Saltpetre, could this be substituted and can anybody work out how much I would need? I have never been able to follow the calculations that some have put on the forum, it's all a bit too much too late for me I'm afraid and I just can't hack it!

http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/index_files/Pastrami.pdf

Thanks.

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:36 pm**

Hi deb

Cure No1 is made up of 16 parts salt & 1 part Sodium Nitrite. as saltpeter is Sodium Nitrate the answer is you cannot make cure No 1 from it.
Usage 1 tsp per 2 kg's of meat

Cure No 2 is made up of 1 part Sodium Nitrite, 64 parts sodium Nitrate (Saltpeter) & 16 parts salt.
Normally used for dry cures.

Hope this helps
regards
sausagemaker

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:42 pm**

Cure No 2 is made up of 1 part Sodium Nitrite, 64 parts sodium Nitrate (Saltpeter) & 16 parts salt.
Normally used for dry cures.

Not quite true sodium nitrate isn't saltpetre and can't be used as a substitute without adjusting the amount of salt added.

This is from my supplier

Sodium Nitrate (Chile Saltpetre) is more concentrated than potassium nitrate (Saltpetre). You need to use sodium nitrate at 53.2% of the level of potassium nitrate in your formulation. For example if you used 100g of potassium nitrate, you need to replace that with 53.2g of sodium nitrate. Add the extra 46.8g to the quantity of salt that you are using.

The legal names for these ingredients are Sodium Nitrate E251 and Potassium Nitrate E252, and should be used within the ingredient declaration. The terms Chile Saltpetre and Saltpetre are what are called fancy names which whilst they can be used for the name of a food, must be clarified to make it clear to the consumer what they are buying. Your local trading standards office should be able to advise you if you have particular queries on naming of foodstuffs.

Franco

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:48 pm**

deb I have made this it's not bad.

Substitute in this recipe

2.5 litres of water
6 gm saltpetre

use all the other ingredients the same.

This will give 228 ppm saltpetre which will be safe.

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:12 pm**

Thanks Oddley. That's nice and simple for me, just what I was after.
I have one other question if you don't mind. If I were to use a smaller piece of meat e.g. two and a half pound as opposed to the stated five pound would all the other ingredients be halved as well. I ask as I think I might start with a small piece of meat just to make sure I like it (i've never had Pastrami before, I just fancy trying it).

Thanks also to Sausagemaker and Franco, can't say I totally follow what you're saying, at times like this I feel really thick - I'm not but I just can't get my head around these things.

Sausagemaker, from the highlighted portion of your message do you mean use 1 tsp of saltpetre per 2kg of meat? If so is this a general rule of thumb that can be used to substitute Saltpetre in recipes that call for cure#1 or is it just for this particular recipe.

sausagemaker wrote:Hi deb

Cure No1 is made up of 16 parts salt & 1 part Sodium Nitrite. as saltpeter is Sodium Nitrate the answer is you cannot make cure No 1 from it.
Usage 1 tsp per 2 kg's of meat
Cure No 2 is made up of 1 part Sodium Nitrite, 64 parts sodium Nitrate (Saltpeter) & 16 parts salt.
Normally used for dry cures.

Hope this helps
regards
sausagemaker

Thanks all.

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:19 pm**

Hi Franco

I,m confused you stated that sodium nitrate is not saltpeter the went on to say sodium nitrate (Chili saltpeter).
You were also taking about replacing nitrates with nitrates, not nitrite with nitrate.
I am not sure if you can replace nitrite with nitrate so there for erred on the side of caution.
Nitrate turns to nitrite in the curing process but is slow to react, this is the reason nitrite is used for wet cures & nitrate is used fore dry.

Deb sorry for the confusion
The usage is for the cure No 1.
I will look into the use of saltpeter as apposed to nitites & keep you posted.
However Oddley seems to have it cracked.

regards
sausagemaker

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:34 pm**

First deb I know that you have a bit of a time trying to follow all this tech stuff that is why I kept it simple. The quantities I have given are safe and will do the job but give it 14 days in the cure plus a couple of days rest.

Do not cut down on the other ingredients for tech reasons this will change the recipe. A little or a lot use the same brine as I have given.

Ignore the rest of this post deb.

Franco I can not understand why they have advised you like that without giving any explanation. If you look at the FSA regs they make no distinction between sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate.

If you have 10 gm of sodium nitrate changed into 10 gm sodium nitrite what is the difference between that and 10 gm potassium nitrate changed into 10 gm potassium nitrite.

I would love for you to find out.

If anybody would like an explaination. My reasoning and the calculation. Please say but I think it may be better to start another thread.

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:06 pm**

To understand this you need to know your chemistry.
If you look at the chemical formulas you may get a small clue:

Potassium Nitrate = KNO3 (molecular weight = 101.1)
Potassium Nitrite = KNO2 (molecular weight = 85.1)
Sodium Nitrate = NaNO3 (molecular weight = 84.99)
Sodium Nitrite = NaNO2 (molecular weight = 68.99)

Because the molecular weight of say Potassium Nitrate is higher than Sodium Nitrate that means that 1g of Sodium Nitrate contains more NO3 (nitrate) than Potassium Nitrate. This is because one Potassium atom weighs more than one Sodium atom.

I hope this makes things a bit clearer.

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:11 pm**

Thanks spuddy at last a piece of information that I can understand and do some research on cheers mate.

Posted: **Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:30 pm**

Just had a little think about this if

the molecular weight of Sodium nitrate is 84.063% of Potassium nitrate this make potassium nitrate 15.937% heavier.

But Franco's supplier says that sodium nitrate is 46.8% stronger I still can't see where it makes that much difference.

have you any more help there spuddy?

Posted: **Tue Feb 22, 2005 8:29 am**

I had some problems with that as well. It would seem that if you use Franco's supplier recommendations then the overall Nitrate content would actually be lower.
It could be down to the strength of the bond in each molecule, maybe Sodium is happier to give up it's nitrate than Potassium is. Needs looking into.

Posted: **Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:45 pm**

Spuddy I have reflected on this question and if Franco's supplier is right then to explain this question my thoughts on this are:

I have estimated that under normal circumstances 75% of potassium nitrate is converted to potassium nitrite. As this was only an estimate I would be happy to lower that estimate a bit to take into account the sodium nitrate question.

If sodium nitrate is happier to give up a nitrite ion and we say that 99% will be converted to sodium nitrite the following will be true.

So we can say 46.8 - 15.937 = 30.863

Then take this away from 99%

Potassium nitrate converted = 99% - 30.863% = 68.137%

I think a potassium nitrate conversion at 68 - 69% is quite feasible and would account for the difference.

What do you think?

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