Dry cure calculator
Weigh your meat. Get exact grams of salt, cure, sugar and spice — and the nitrite dose that delivers, checked against USDA.
This is a calculator, not a tested recipe. It does the math; it does not know your meat, your chamber or your process. When in doubt, follow an established recipe from a trusted source.
Why this matters
Nitrite is what stops Clostridium botulinum in a product that never gets cooked. Too little and the barrier is thin; too much and you're over a limit set for good reason. The grams alone don't tell you where you are, so every result here shows the delivered ppm next to the USDA maximum. Salt does the rest of the work — it pulls water and slows spoilage while the meat dries.
Notes
- Limits: 9 CFR 424.21(c) and 9 CFR 424.22(b) (bacon); USDA FSIS Processing Inspectors' Calculations Handbook (1995). Ground products: ¼ oz sodium nitrite per 100 lb = 156.25 ppm; 2¾ oz sodium nitrate = 1,718.75 ppm. Dry-rubbed whole muscle: 1 oz nitrite per 100 lb = 625 ppm; 3½ oz nitrate = 2,187.5 ppm. Dry-cured bacon: 200 ppm nitrite, no nitrate. FSIS rounds these to 156 / 1,718 / 625 / 2,187. We use the exact regulatory fraction, so the standard 0.25% Cure #1 dose reads as at the limit, not over it.
- Contested: for dry-rubbed whole muscle the legal ceiling is 625 ppm, and some traditional recipes dose well above 156 ppm. Many others use 0.25% Cure #1 or #2 (156 ppm) for everything. We default to the lower figure on every product. You can raise it to the legal limit, but if you do, have a trusted recipe that says so.
- Contested: Cure #1 or #2? The common guidance is Cure #2 for products that dry for weeks or months (the nitrate slowly converts to nitrite and keeps protecting) and Cure #1 for short cures and anything cooked. Some producers use Cure #1 for long-dried products too. Nitrate is not permitted in bacon. Check your label: brands that don't use the 6.25% formula need the "Other" option. Morton Tender Quick is not a substitute for Cure #1 at the same weight.
- Salt: total salt of 2.5–3.5% of meat weight is the range most dry-cure recipes use. Going below it removes some of the margin that salt provides; going above it gets harsh. This calculator counts the salt inside the cure toward your total.
- Weigh after trimming. If you weigh bone-in or with fat you'll cut away, the real ppm in the meat you keep will be higher than shown.
- These are ingoing limits. 9 CFR 424.21 also caps residual nitrite in the finished product at 200 ppm (as sodium nitrite), which can't be calculated from a recipe. Cure amounts are rounded down to 0.01 g so the number you weigh never exceeds the dose shown. Below about 10 g of cure you need a 0.01 g scale.
- Cure time is not calculated here. Rules of thumb vary by thickness and method, and sources disagree.