Smoking using pink salt

[Jonstotz1]

There seems to be differing opinions about when you can start smoking process using pink salt? Some say stuff and go right to smoker others say hold overnight then smoke.

Thank you. Jon

[Jonathon]

Jonstotz1 Quick breakdown of Nitrate-nitrite and smoking. What we call sure cure/pink salts/cure#1 is nothing more than a mix of 6.25 sodium nitrite and the rest is just salt as a bulking agent and pink die to make it easy to identify. What happens when you add nitrate to a product is that it breaks down over time into nitrite, which then breaks down into Nitric Oxide which is actually giving the curing power. We do almost nothing with nitrate, that is for slow curing processes. Sure cure needs to be added and then the product needs to be held overnight to allow the nitrite to break down in nitric oxide and start working on curing the meat. The times it is NOT needed to be held overnight is when we add something like Encapsulated Citric Acid(ECA), Sodium Ereythorbate or Smoked Meat Stabilizer to the meat. This is because those products act as a cure accelerator, meaning that either the nitrate is going to breakdown into nitric oxide quickly (sodium erythorbate) or the lowered pH is going to render the meat safeuntil the cure is activated (ECA).

So, if you don’t add a cure accelerator it must be held overnight, if you do add a cure accelerator go right to the smoker!

[Jonstotz1]

Thank you for the very detailed answer

[smokinbubba]

I’ve been using smoked meat stabilizer from waltons for a few yrs now and it works great. I don’t have the fridge space or patients to store overnight.

[blackbetty61]

smokinbubba I’m with ya no fridge space or patience I always use a accelerator I’ve used both sodium Erythorbate and smoked meat stab. Don’t use ECA much