How the bacon curing calculator works
This calculator uses the equilibrium (EQ) curing method, the standard approach for home and small-batch bacon. Instead of packing meat in a fixed amount of salt and guessing when to pull it out, you scale every ingredient to the exact weight of the meat. The salt and nitrite then diffuse into the meat until they reach equilibrium at a known, safe concentration — so leaving the bacon in the cure an extra day or two does no harm.
The key ingredient is a nitrite cure. In North America this is Prague Powder #1 (also sold as Insta Cure #1, pink curing salt #1, or TCM). By law it is 6.25% sodium nitrite and 93.75% ordinary salt, dyed pink so it is never mistaken for table salt. The pink dye is not the curing agent — the sodium nitrite is.
The formula
To hit a target nitrite concentration in the meat:
- Nitrite required (g) = meat weight (g) × target ppm ÷ 1,000,000
- Prague Powder #1 (g) = nitrite required ÷ 0.0625 (because cure #1 is 6.25% nitrite)
- Salt (g) = meat weight (g) × salt % ÷ 100
- Sugar (g) = meat weight (g) × sugar % ÷ 100
The two steps for cure #1 collapse to a simple rule of thumb: 2.5 g of Prague Powder #1 per 1,000 g of meat (0.25% of the meat weight). That dose delivers 156 ppm sodium nitrite — the maximum the USDA allows for dry- and immersion-cured products. The salt in the cure #1 (about 2.34 g per kg at this dose) is small, which is why bacon recipes add a separate 1.5–2.5% of plain salt on top for flavor and preservation.
Why nitrite matters
Sodium nitrite does three jobs no other ingredient can: it inhibits Clostridium botulinum (the bacterium that causes botulism) in the low-oxygen environment of cured, bagged meat; it fixes the characteristic pink, cured color; and it produces the tangy "cured" flavor that distinguishes bacon from plain roasted pork belly. Curing without nitrite is possible but it is a different, higher-risk product — it must be treated as fresh meat, cooked promptly, and never cold-smoked.
Common reference points
- 1 kg pork belly → 2.5 g cure #1, 20 g salt (2%), 10 g sugar (1%)
- 2.5 kg belly → 6.25 g cure #1, ~50 g salt, ~25 g sugar
- 5 lb (2,268 g) belly → about 5.7 g cure #1
- 156 ppm is the ceiling for dry/immersion cure; 120 ppm is a common target for a gentler cure.