What is Sifto Quik Cure and is it necessary?

[eagvent]

I'm pumped.  My new digital smoker arrived yesterday and I can't wait for the weekend.  I noticed Sifto listed in quite a few of the booklet recipes.

What is it?  Is it necessary?  Can I assume that it's easily replaced by a kosher salt and spice rub?

Thanks.

[3rensho]

I did a quick Google of it and it appears to be a Canadian product containing both NaNO₂ and NaNO₃ which control bacterial growth for safety.  No, salt and a spice rub are not a substitute.  I'd go with the appropriate amount of Morten TenderQwik (sp?).

[allenwc]

Kosher salt has and is used as a way to cure meat to make it kosher. It removes the last traces of blood in and on meat, that makes the meat kosher. Kosher salt, pickling salt, and sea salt work to cure meat without making the meat overly salty by having a very large grain size. You can, however, get pickling salt and sea salt that are fine grained. You don't want these for curing meats.

Meat curing involves chemically reacting myoglobin with Nitric Oxide to form NO Myoglobin which is pink. Sodium Nitrate is reduced to sodium nitrite through bacterial decomposition. Sodium Nitrite is then chemically converted by ACID into Nitrous Acid and then chemically reacts to produce Nitric Oxide which reacts with the myoglobin in the meat to produce our cure.

Sea salt contains trace amounts of Sodium Nitrate. If you add a lactic acid starter culture ( Staphylococcus carnosus) it will convert the Nitrate to Nitrite and then adding an acid such as lemon juice will do the rest. You must then kill the bacteria by raising the internal temperature of the meat to at least 160 degrees fahrenheit before eating.

You don't actually need to truly cure a meat to cold smoke it if the total exposed time below the food safe temperature of 160 degrees is less than two hours. You can flavour your meat by whatever marinade process or flavour processing you prefer as long as you do so below 40 degrees fahrenheit, and then smoke it a a low temperature for less than two hours.

[NePaSmoKer]

I'm pumped.  My new digital smoker arrived yesterday and I can't wait for the weekend.  I noticed Sifto listed in quite a few of the booklet recipes.

What is it?  Is it necessary?  Can I assume that it's easily replaced by a kosher salt and spice rub?

Thanks.

eagvent

If your going to be smoking or cold smoking any kind of meat like jerky, sausage, ham, bacon or brined poultry and the sorts where the temps start low always always use cure.....Trust me on this cuz i dont need to read it from a book to tell you.

[surber]

Where can  you buy sifto quik kure

[mbmb]

A little googling turned up Post #6, here: http://www.food-newsgroups.com/thread/18912/Morton-Tenderquick.html

I guess it's similar to "Sifto Quik-kure" here in Canada.
I use it for making corned beef & jerky & yes, brining a turkey prior
to smoking (but only once!)
Here's the ingredients of the Sifto;
Content:
91.5% Sodium Chloride
6.0% Sucrose
1.5% Monosodium Glutamate
0.4% Sodium Nitrite
0.6% Sodium Nitrate
Keep out of reach of children <--{that's weird!}