Food & Cooking
Cure Salt Calculator
Prague Powder #1 and #2 amounts for bacon, ham, and charcuterie — with USDA nitrite ppm guardrails.
Cure Salt Calculator
Inputs
Quick cures use nitrite only.
Results
Cure salt
Target: 156 ppm sodium nitrite — USDA max.
5.67 g
Kosher salt (2.5%)
Seasoning salt, separate from cure salt.
56.7 g
Sugar (1%, optional)
22.7 g
Meat weight
2,268 g
Food safety
Never exceed the listed cure-salt amount. Sodium nitrite is toxic above 156 ppm in finished product. Weigh in grams — teaspoons are unreliable. Keep cure salt labeled and away from table salt.
How to use this
Prague Powder #1 (pink, 6.25% sodium nitrite) is for cures that finish cooked within 30 days — bacon, pastrami, hot-smoked sausage. Prague Powder #2 adds sodium nitrate, which slowly converts to nitrite over time — use it for long-aged dry-cured meats (salami, coppa, prosciutto).
Morton Tender Quick is a pre-mixed cure and seasoning salt. It is much less concentrated than Prague Powder, so the dosage is larger — do not substitute one for the other by volume.
Formula
Prague #1 / #2: 2.5 g per kg of meat (≈ 156 ppm nitrite)
Tender Quick: 1 tbsp per lb of meat (≈ 31 g / kg)
Kosher salt: 2.5% of meat weight
Sugar: 1% of meat weight (optional)
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Formula
cure_g = meat_kg × 2.5 g/kg (Prague #1/#2, 156 ppm nitrite target)