Meat Curing Salt Calculator

How it is calculated

Nitrite needed is a fraction of the meat weight: nitrite (g) = meat (g) × ppm ÷ 1,000,000. Cure #1 is assumed to be 6.25 % sodium nitrite, so cure (g) = nitrite ÷ 0.0625. The other 93.75 % of the cure is salt, which counts toward your salt target: extra salt = meat × salt% ÷ 100 − cure × 0.9375, never below zero. Meat is in grams; ppm is milligrams of nitrite per kilogram of meat. The salt percentage may be left blank, which counts as 0 and shows 0.00 g of extra salt; a typed value must be 0–100. Meat and ppm must be above zero, and a ppm above 625 is rejected as a typo. The tool does not stop you at 156 ppm, so choosing a ppm that suits your product and local rules is your responsibility.

Common mistakes

• Using ordinary table salt, or a different cure such as Cure #2, in place of Cure #1. The numbers assume exactly 6.25 % nitrite, so another mix gives a wrong dose.
• Weighing the cure on kitchen scales that read whole grams. The amount is a few grams, so use a scale accurate to 0.01 g.
• Adding the cure on top of the salt target. The tool already subtracts the salt carried in by the cure, so adding both over-salts the meat.
• Typing the salt target as a weight instead of a percentage of meat weight. 2.5 means 2.5 %, not 2.5 g; a value above 100 shows no result.
• Expecting a low salt target to remove the cure's own salt. If the target is below what the cure already brings (for example 0.1 % here), the extra salt simply shows 0.00 g.