I just purchased 28lbs of bellies, and the question I have is that the container I use, when the bellies are placed in it, only holds about 7 L of water, or about 29 cups.
I only had about 2.5 cups of Bradley cure.....
which leaves me about 1.5 cups short of cure for the water....... but well short of both water and cure for the amount of meat.
what do you guys think I should do?
1) buy another container and get more cure or 2) Only use the amount of bellies that you have enough container and cure and freeze the rest until you get more cure.
Your other option is to use the dry cure application rate. You have more than enough Bradley cure to cure all 28 pounds.
Except I started it already....
wonder if I should add some Mortons?????
I don't like the idea of mixing different cure mixtures, even though the two (Bradley and Morton's measures approximately the same.
What did you end up doing? Such as how much liquid and how much Bradley Cure did you use. I quickly calculated that you could have gotten away with using 5 quarts of liquid, if that amount of liquid was enough to cover the bellies.
I used about 29 cups of water (7 litres) which fully covered the meat.
and 2.5 cups of cure
First, I have to mention you should avoid deviating from the manufacture's instructions. Having said that; I'm not that familiar with the Bradley cures, but like I mentioned it seems to be very similar to Tender Quick in the percentage of cure. You should have enough sodium nitrite in the brine to give you a safe level of cure; which is 40ppm's. Most commercial cures will provide approximately 156ppm's. You will probably not get as much "bacon flavor". What you can do to improve things, is to inject the bellies with the brine solution. If you have an injector, try to inject 10% brine that is equal to the weight of the bellies.
Yes... lesson learned....
thanks for your help!!!