Dry Cure Bacon Recipe

[DarrinG]

Alright I have done my searching and I have found nothing that suits my need for a dry cure recipe for bacon. Infact when I search this site I get 1108 matches to what I am searching for. Far too much to try and sort through.

All I want is a dry cure recipe for bacon (streaky) that uses prague powder or instacure that I can do. I want to prepare it similar to Paul Kribs website where he vacuum seals it.

Thanks again,

DarrinG

[saucisson]

I use Oddley's formula :

Meat 1 kg
Saltpetre 0.5 Grams (500 ppm)
Salt Weight 20 grams (2%)
Sugar Weight 10 grams (1%)
Sodium Ascorbate 0.55 grams (550 ppm)

It just needs tweaking for Prague powder#1

Prague powder#1 is 6.25% nitrite. For dry curing you want 1oz nitrite for 100lbs meat. That works out at 0.623g/kg of meat. So you want ~10g Prague#1 per kg of meat.

So:

Salt 10g
Prague#1 10g
sugar 10g

Addition of Sodium Ascorbate is now recommended at 0.55g per kilo of meat

Dave

[DarrinG]

Sodium Ascorbate? Is that the same as plain old Vitamin C? I googled "Sodium Ascorbate" and its telling me thats what it is.

If not where do you get it?

Thanks

DarrinG

[Oddley]

saucisson that's far too much Prague #1 10 gm per kg of meat works out as 625 ppm or mg/kg the FSA recommend 150 ppm or mg/kg in the States the FDA say 200 ppm or mg/kg.

So the recipe for Prague #1 would be:

Meat 1 kg
Prague #1 3.2 Grams (200 ppm)
Salt Weight 20 grams (2%)
Sugar Weight 10 grams (1%)
Sodium Ascorbate 0.55 grams (550 ppm)

Yes Sodium Ascorbate is vitamin C

[saucisson]

Yes it's Vitamin C. Certain studies have linked nitrosamines in high temperature cooked bacon (ie fried or grilled) with cancer. The nitosamines are formed from nitrate/nitrite from the cure. Vitamin C prevents nitrosamine formation.

Nitrosamine formation is the reason nitrates are banned from US commercial bacon. I don't follow this logic as it's nitrite that forms nitrosamines

[DarrinG]

Now here is a question for you. I usually brine my bellies and I use quite a lot of Prague powder because I figure with all of the water plus 1.5 bellies per pail of brine that Osmosis would equal out everything. I will have to find my brine recipe to get the proper amounts but what are your opinions on this.

DarrinG

[saucisson]

Oddley, thanks for putting me straight on that. That figure of 1oz per 100lbs of meat for dry cure is widely quoted eg here:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distributi ... J0974.html

so it's worrying if it's out of date.

DarrinG, Oddley is the man to ask about brines so I'll leave it to him

[Oddley]

DarrinG post your recipe and I'll have a look.

[DarrinG]

120 oz clean water
1 1/2 cups coarse salt - 7.8 oz. = 1 cup
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 T Prague Powder

This is how my recipe normally unfolds. But I have found that I usually need to double my recipe because its not enough brine for the bellies. If I do double the recipe I normally only use 3 T of Prague Powder. The bellies I get are normally about 9 lbs. and I can get upto 7-7.5 lbs. finished product after I smoke them.

[Oddley]

DarrinG I will have too convert your weights etc to grams first so I can easily see any potential mistakes. So is the 120 oz for the water US fluid oz and is the cup measurement us standard ounces.

[DarrinG]

Yup the oz. is US fluid ounces and the cup is your standard 1 cup measuring cup. They are level cups too, not heaping or anything.

DarrinG

[DarrinG]

I don't know what happened to your response but I was trying to figure out our numbers and now its gone?

I don't know what happened.

DarrinG

[Oddley]

I would be happy for you to check my result's I got the conversion weights from.

http://www.mo.quik.com/bpglenn/measurement.html

120 oz clean water = 3548 gm about 7.5 Pint's
1 1/2 cups coarse salt - 7.8 oz. = 1 cup = 346 gm
1 1/2 cups brown sugar = 346 gm
2 T Prague Powder = 30 gm just over 1 oz

Total Brine weight = 4270 gm

using the FDA formula

------------- grams premixed cure * % Nitrite in mix * % Pump * 1000000
PPM = -----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------100 *100 * Weight of Brine

------------- 30 * 6.25 * 10 * 1000000
PPM = -------------------------------------- = 44 ppm or mg/kg
------------------100 *100 * 4270

If the conversion weight's are about correct this amount of nitrite will have little effect on bacteria.

[Oddley]

As I said I had to convert the weight's to grams to see if there was any mistakes.

Well when I posted the results there was a glaring error. So I had to delete the post and put it right.

[DarrinG]

I don't quite follow some of the calculations but I what I don't understand is that my butcher warned me to use only a teaspoon of prague powder in my brine. Here you are telling me that I don't have enough.

Could you further explain the calculations to me.

Thanks

DarrinG