I bought the following from Butcher Packer.
DQ Curing Salt - 1 lb. (aka DC Curing Salt)
$2.50
All pink tinted cures have the same sodium nitrite concentration, which is 6.25%. Prague Powder # 1, Insta-Cure, Modern Cure are all the same. The pink color is not what gives the meat a reddish hue - that is done by the curing process. Using DQ CURE, your sausage will be ready to cook or smoke as soon as you have it stuffed (there is no need to wait). When used in a brine solution, the reason for allowing the product to set for 24 hours is to make sure that all of the curing compounds have had a chance to be distributed evenly into the meat. After the meat has been cured and cooked, it will have a longer shelf life than uncured cooked meat. Use 4 oz per 100 lb.
Now when I go online to do a oz-teaspoon conversion it states that 4 ounces = 54 teaspoons. Everything I have read from you guys states 1 teaspoon per 5 lbs of meat. What am I doing wrong??? Is the calculator wrong or the directions on butcher packer wrong, or is DQ Curing salt measured different???
I am starting to cure a load of pork bellys and pork loin tonight so if someone could help me out that would be great.
Thanks
DQ salt is the same as cure #1
use 1 tsp for 5lbs of meat.
prague powder #1 = 1 tsp for 5lbs of meat
insta-cure #1 = 1 tsp for 5 lbs of meat.
4oz of DQ will do 100lbs of meat, i think thats where your getting 54 tsp.
nepas
Smokeitall
What online converter are you using?
You have to be careful trying to convert weight measurements to volume measurements. Sometimes they are not that accurate. As an example, here is a link to Allied Kenco's conversion table (http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/popup_text.php/fld/howto/tbl/howtos/key/33). You will see it shows 1 oz of Cure #1 = 2 TBS... This translates to 6 tsp per 25 lbs.
In this link from Allied Kenco's site (http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/1467) it indicates to use 1 oz per 25 lbs or for smaller quantities 1 tsp per 5 lbs.
Mike
Thanks Nepas and Mike, I think the online converter I used is incorrect. The site I used was onlineconversion.com, I clicked on cooking and then clicked on weight to volume cooking conversions. I then entered in ounce (weight) to teaspoon and I see now that is reads below the answer (for substance with density of 0.42 g/ml) and that looks like my problem. I stuck with what you guys had posted on the site and have 7 pounds of belly bacon and 5.5 pounds of Canadian bacon in the fridge for the long wait.
Thanks again.
I use a program called "Convert". It's a free program available from:
http://joshmadison.com/article/convert-for-windows (http://joshmadison.com/article/convert-for-windows)
I'm running it on Windows Vista (in case they don't list Vista as a working op sys.
Convert showed that 1oz = 6tsp
I downloaded the converter, it is a very nice program. Thank you for the link I will use this a lot.
Weight to volume conversions only work if you're working with known weights... I can tell you how many TBS of ground feathers you need to get to 1LB but the same number of TBS of lead will be a lot more than a pound.