Key Points:
- A minimum of 2% for dry curing/wet brine curing whole muscle, 2.25% is a common choice – up to 3% for most recipes with whole muscle and dry cured salami.
- 1 or 2 decimal place accurate digital scales are a great tool for this – pocket digital scales or gold scales are the common types.
- If wet brining, it’s a base of 40% water ratio to the weight ie. 1L=1Kg; therefore, 1 Kg of Meat would need 400 ml of water. This is dependent on container size.
- It’s up to you; for simple dry-cured meat, 2.25% is a prevalent sea salt level (pink salt in addition to this, so it ends up being 2.5% TOTAL SALT.
Here is a simple calculator to work out salt and pink curing salt (for both pink curing salt 1 or 2).
This will allow you to precisely work out the inputs for your cured meats.
You will find other links to relevant articles I’ve written on this subject below.
Equilibrium Curing Calculator
Dry Equilibrium Curing = % of Sea Salt + 0.25% Pink Curing Salt to the Total Weight of the Meat
Wet Brine Equilibrium Curing = % of Sea Salt + 0.25% Pink Curing Salt to the Total Weight of the Meat in addition 1L=1Kg weight – 40% water is calculated of the total meat weight
| Meat Curing Calculator Tool | |
| Method |
Equilibrium Wet Brining
or Equilibrium Dry Curing |
| Meat Weight | lb kg g |
| Salt | % |
| Water % | % |
|
Calculations |
|
| Pink Curing Salt | 1.59 g or 0.056 oz |
| Sea Salt | 15.88 g or 0.56 oz |
| Water | 0.181 litres or 0.048 gallons |
For a more detailed guide – check out this page on equilibrium curing.
Other Resources Related
Links
- Complete Guide to Equilibrium Curing
- Whole Pig Butchery Article
- Designs for Meat Curing Chamber
- History of Preserving Meat
- Building a Dry Curing Chamber
- 50 Examples of Cured Meat Around the World
https://eatcuredmeat.com/what-equipment-do-i-need-for-meat-curing/