Bacon Curing Calculator

Specifically for bacon curing using an equilibrium method, here is a bacon equilibrium curing calculator.

I’ll also add key points about bacon curing relevant to the task.

This calculator about precision, consistency and allowing you to not OVER or UNDER season the bacon you are making.

Bacon Equilibrium Curing Calculator

The key here is calculating the weight of the salt as a percentage of the weight of the meat.

This calculator also applies to both dry or wet curing.

So this calculator for curing bacon can work out whether you want a dry or wet brining curing result!

A spice grinder filled with various spices sitting on a digital kitchen scale beside a can of Spanish Paprika and a container of brown sugar. — **Tip: Placing a Spice Grinder On Pocket Digital Scales Allows you to Add spices and salt directly to** the Grinder.

Key Points:

Preference for Bacon Curing – 2.0% to 2.75% – ideally salt level.
A minimum of 2% is Needed for Curing the Bacon.
Skin Can be Left On or Removed.
Curing in this way will create consistent results and allow you to choose the saltiness of your cured meats.

If you use nitrates, it works out based on the 0.25% pink curing salt guide for curing salt No. 1

Meat Curing Calculator Tool
Method	Equilibrium Wet Brining or Equilibrium Dry Curing
Meat Weight	lb kg g
Pink curing salt	%
Salt	%
Calculations
Pink Curing Salt
Sea Salt
Water

For a full rundown on how to equilibrium cure using the calculator above and how I make bacon check out the article below I wrote.

How to Equilibrium Cure Bacon – Dry Cured or Wet Brine

My advice about using pink curing salts or other styles of nitrates/nitrites is that it’s a personal choice. Take into account

Dry Cured Bacon = % of Sea Salt + 0.25% Pink Curing Salt to the Total Weight of the Meat

Wet Brine Bacon Curing = % of Sea Salt + 0.25% Pink Curing Salt to the Total Weight of the Meat in addition 1L=1Kg weight, so 40% water is calculated for the total meat weight

Bacon Making Advice

After a few decades of making bacon here are some lessons learnt.

Cold Smoking bacon in a 5-8-hour session and resting allows more smoke vapor to adhere to the bacon.
Less smoke is always better than too much; airflow is important to making the bacon—ideally, both the airflow into the smoker and also existing the smoker. The most undesirable design for a cold smoke I’ve used, had no outflow for the smoke.
I prefer a 50% or less sugar-to-salt ratio, i.e., 2:1. Often, it’s touted as a 1:1 ratio for bacon — this is too much sweetness.