Cure #1 Brine Question - For venison

[hvhunter]

I'm going to smoke some venison backstraps, and I need to make a brine. I have
approximately 5-6 lbs of backstrap meat. How much cure #1 to how much liquid
do I use? How long should I brine it for? I'm in no hurry; it can sit all week.

Thanks in advance for the replies

[KevinG]

The maximum ingoing nitrite limit is 200 ppm which corresponds to about 4.2 oz. of cure#1 (or 120 grams) to 1 gallon (or 8.33 lbs.) of water.

[Habanero Smoker]

I generally use 3 ounces of cure #1 per gallon of water; and 1 cup (10 oz.) of pickling salt (occasionally I will use 3/4 cup 7.5 oz). If you already have your favorite brine recipe but just want to add cure #1, don't forget to reduce the amount of salt by the amount of cure #1 that you are adding.

For that size of loin, I wouldn't go more then 48 hours. I would reposition the meat and stir the brine once per day.

[hvhunter]

Thanks for the answers. That leads me to two new questions:

   How many tsp/tbs are there per oz of cure?

  If I went more than 48 hrs in the bring, what would happen?

[KevinG]

4.2 oz = 10 teaspoons or 6 Tablespoons.

As long as you keep your meat cold, more time is not necessarily going to hurt it. The salt content will try to reach an equilibrium, so it may get a little more salty, but you probably won't notice it. I wouldn't do a bone in meat more than 30 days though because bone sour can occur.

[mow_delon]

Done numerous venison loins with Morton TQ.  Always brine for 3-4 days when leaving whole and if I slice it for brined jerkey I still brine for 2 days, minimum.

[mow_delon]

Sweet, I am no linger a "newbie" with the last post!

[Yooper Jim]

KevinG   4.2 oz = 10 teaspoons or 6 tablespoons??????  6 tablespoons = 18 teaspoons.  I assume that's an error.  Which is correct?

Jim

[KevinG]

KevinG   4.2 oz = 10 teaspoons or 6 tablespoons??????  6 tablespoons = 18 teaspoons.  I assume that's an error.  Which is correct?

Jim

Oops, sorry about that, 4.1 oz approx = 20 teaspoons or 6 Tablespoons you are correct. That's what I get for typing with one hand and reading with the other.

[Tenpoint5]

KevinG   4.2 oz = 10 teaspoons or 6 tablespoons??????  6 tablespoons = 18 teaspoons.  I assume that's an error.  Which is correct?

Jim

Oops, sorry about that, 4.1 oz approx = 20 teaspoons or 6 Tablespoons you are correct. That's what I get for typing with one hand and reading with the other.

Reading?

[KevinG]

Holding the book open with my finger on the spot I was trying to get the information on. Almost braille, but not quite.  ;D

[Sailor]

Ummmm...the books that I have say 3 teaspoons equal 1 Tablespoon.  Maybe I have cook books that are wrong.

[Seminole]

hv hunter

Making brine is very simple but calculating nitrites (Cure #1) is a bit harder. It is a straightforward procedure in the dry curing method used for comminuted products like sausages. We add the needed amount into the sausage mix, stuff the mix into casings and the amount of cure and other ingredients like salt is fully accounted for. Now imagine adding Cure #1 into a solution of salt and water and then placing meat in it. The meat might be immersed 4, 5, 7, or 30 days in a brine, then the meat is removed but the brine remains. How much nitrite and salt diffused into the meat and how much has remained in a leftover brine is anybody's guess. There are only two ways to be sure:

Weigh the meat before and after curing. This operation is time consuming and will have to be performed on each individual piece. Although the underlying theory is sound, I don't believe that anybody is doing that.

Pump the predetermined amount of solution inside of the meat and then don't immerse meat into leftover solution. Meats are usually placed in a tumbler to uniformly distribute solution. To better estimate the amount of ingoing nitrite, the USDA recommends the following method for calculating nitrite in the cover pickle when curing hams, shoulders, bellies, etc., because it takes weeks for these large items to reach equilibrium. The method assumes that the meat or poultry does not absorb more than the level of nitrite in the cover pickle. Hence, the calculation for nitrite is based on the green weight of the meat or poultry (as is the case with pumped products), but uses percent pick-up as the percent pump. The percent pick-up is the total amount of cover pickle absorbed by the meat or poultry. It is used in the calculation for immersion cured products in the same way the percent pump is used in calculations for pumped products. It sounds nice in theory but it still depends on the % pick-up of the cured meat.

Does anybody know what would be the % pick-up of a 5 lb pork butt immersed for 10 days in 60° SAL brine? This forces us to use logic and some general estimates which will produce acceptable results.

Calculation Formula (using % pick-up)

ppm = lb. nitrite x % pick-up x 1,000,000/lb. pickle

Without weighing the meat, the only way to determine % pick-up of cured meat is by an educated guess based on previous experience. It is generally accepted that immersion cured hams (60° SAL) pick-up about 4% weight. If we add 4.2 ounces (120 g) of Cure #1 to 1 gallon of brine, the solution will contain 1973 ppm of sodium nitrite. At first sight it may seem that there is an excessive amount of nitrite in water. The answer is that only a small percentage will be absorbed by meat during the immersion process. At 4% pick-up the ham will absorb 79 ppm which will be just enough for any meaningful curing. At 10% pump (needle pumping) the same ham will contain 197 ppm of sodium nitrite which is in compliance with the government standard of 200 ppm. Pumping more than 10% or increasing the amount of cure in the solution will of course cross the limit.

If you need stronger or weaker brine change the amount of salt according to the salt tables. The amount of Cure #1 should remain the same. To eliminate the danger of uneven coloring, manufacturers add sodium erythorbate into the solution. This speeds up the nitrite reaction and more nitric oxide will be released. Nitric oxide will in turn react with the meat's myoglobin and the pink color will be created. Don't add ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) to brines that contain sodium nitrite (Cure #1). The water will trigger violent reaction. By now you should be fully aware that there isn't one universal brine and many solutions will do the job. Meat placed in a weaker solution will do as good a job as meat placed in a stronger solution as long as a proper curing time is allowed.

Meat Pumping

Meat pumping is the only method that allows for precise control of salt and nitrite distribution inside meat. A commonly used percentage of injection is 10%. Although after curing the meat may weigh 110% in relation to its original weight, some of the pickle will be lost during smoking and cooking. You can easily increase the gain of your product by adding a phosphate blend which is available from many distributors. This will allow you to pump more water which will be retained by the meat even during cooking. If you pump meat with a solution that contains 2000 ppm of nitrite, but you inject only 10% of solution in relation to meat's weight, the meat absorbs only 200 ppm of sodium nitrite. This is a true figure as long as the meat is not placed in curing solution anymore. Such pumped meat is usually placed in a meat tumbler and no more solution is added.

The percent pick-up or the percent pump is the total amount of cover pickle absorbed by the meat or poultry.

Example:
10 Percent injection.
Green weight (initial weight) = 5 kg (11 lbs).
Percent injection = 10%
0.10 x 11 lbs = 1.1 lb
Pounds of pickle to inject = 1.1 lbs.
The weight of injected ham:
11 + 1.1 = 12.1 lbs.

Formula for % pump is the same as the formula for % pick-up listed above.

ppm = lb nitrite x % pump x 1,000,000/lb. pickle

Pumping meat at 10% pump with the general brine formula from the previous page (4.2 oz Cure #1) results with 197 ppm of sodium nitrite which is in compliance with the government limit of 200 ppm.

The following information comes from the book "Meat Through the Microscope" written by C.Robert Moulton, Ph.D. and W.Lee Lewis, Ph.D. and published by Institute of Meat Packing, The University of Chicago:

Soaking reduced the curing agents in most of the sub-sections (sliced ham-our note) but especially in the butt and face sections. Smoking had little effect on the salt, nitrate and sugar content but the nitrite content was decreased. Baking reduced the percentages of all curing ingredients but the nitrite was so greatly reduced that the highest value found was only 11 parts per million. Table 66 gives the average
composition of the five whole hams and shows clearly the effects of soaking, smoking and baking.

You can see the results table at: http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/sausage-making/curing/nitrates  at the bottom of the page. (I don't know how to insert table here).

To emphasize the importance of these results, and especially of the very great destruction of nitrite by baking, one should remember in contrast that sweet-pickle solutions will contain from 500 to 1000 parts of nitrite per million and that the surface of hams removed from such pickles, especially at the ragged edges of the butt, will most certainly contain over 200 p.p.m. However, after soaking and smoking the average nitrite content is well within the prescribed limits. In the survey summarized above only two out of 10 surface sections showed over 200 p.p.m. of nitrite. In spite of the figures given in the first part of this paragraph, no subsection of surface meat showed more than 11 p.p.m. after baking.

My comment: people are unnecessarily afraid of adding nitrites. By the time meats are consumed, they contain less then 50 parts per million of nitrite. It is said that commercially prepared meats in the USA contain about 10 ppm of nitrite when bought in a supermarket.

www.wedlinydomowe.com

[Habanero Smoker]

Hi Seminole;

Welcome back. I haven't seen you post in a while.