# Commercial Cure Calculator - Immersion, Injection or Tumble



## bob-whie (Feb 13, 2018)

Been a lurker here, off and on, for years.
Tried many of the wet cures offered here. 
As I learned and experimented, no specific cure offered met the accuracy I determined  necessary for absolute food safety.

Fortunately an acquaintance who worked for a packing house provided the basic cures the packer employed in their products. 
An Excel spreadsheet was setup with the formula calculations. 
This particular calculator is setup for 10% inclusion for BACON.

Once open click the "pop-out" arrow in upper right hand corner to read the document. To make changes click "Open in Google Sheets" at the top of the page. 

It is simple to use. Just highlight the green batch weight cell and enter your belly weight.
All other green cells are changeable so you can adjust for your ingredients. 
To eliminate an ingredient you don't desire simply type a zero in that particular green cell. 
By eliminating an ingredient it is necessary to reconfigure other cells to achieve a 10% brine to batch weight ratio.


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## bob-whie (Feb 13, 2018)

Ham Cure Calculator 20% Inclusion 
Pump & Soak or Tumble


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## Braz (Feb 13, 2018)

That's pretty slick. Thanks.


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## daveomak (Feb 13, 2018)

Correction...  Tinted curing salt is *sodium* *nitrite*..  Same with Total *Sodium Nitrite*
And I found the Total Ppm nitrite did not match up when I inserted my values for curing...  When I entered the ingredients to make 120 ppm nitrite, the "BOX" showed 437 ppm..


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## bob-whie (Feb 13, 2018)

daveomak said:


> Correction...  Tinted curing salt is *sodium* *nitrite*..  Same with Total *Sodium Nitrite*
> And I found the Total Ppm nitrite did not match up when I inserted my values for curing...  When I entered the ingredients to make 120 ppm nitrite, the "BOX" showed 437 ppm..



Thanks for the proofreading service Dave. You are indeed a giant on this forum, I am privileged to recieve your reply.
Corrections have been made.
Would be a honored to review the specific formula you are using, is it possible to share with me?


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## daveomak (Feb 13, 2018)

I treated the calculator as if I was doing a dry rub...  no water...    I'll see if I can duplicate it...


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## daveomak (Feb 13, 2018)

Here you go..  I just used salt, sugar and cure...  did a screen save....  All the other categories are zero...  

29 ish grams of cure#1 per 32 pounds of meat should be around ~128 Ppm nitrite...

Sorry about the find...   I'm just "inquisitive" when new stuff shows up..  I try to test stuff so our members don't get caught up in something...  I wish it worked perfect ....   Maybe I did something wrong...  If so, BE SURE to let me know..  That would only be my 3rd mistake for the day..  Gotta keep track... don't want to go over 6.....


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## bob-whie (Feb 13, 2018)

daveomak said:


> Here you go..  I just used salt, sugar and cure...  did a screen save....  All the other categories are zero...
> 
> 29 ish grams of cure#1 per 32 pounds of meat should be around ~128 Ppm nitrite...
> 
> ...



Dave, thanks for the reply.
"What we've got here is failure to communicate"

Somewhere it is obvious I failed make it explicit that the calculator is brine based and not intended for Dry Rub curing.
Dry Rub curing is an artisanal endeavor conducted by a vanishing breed of experts like yourself that inherently know the exacting procedures to follow.
That's why I chose the Wet Cure method because I was aware I could never achieve the necessary expertise to ascertain the dry rub method was being properly executed.

Settled on the brine based Tumble Wet Cure which yields very accurate and repeatable results without the requirement of high expertise.
Purchased at auction a Hollymatic 100 pound tumbler for a ridiculously inexpensive price similar to this one on video.

We raise our own Yorkshire/Hampshire cross hogs which are meaty yet with just the right amount of fat so as not to be wasteful. Hogs are entirely on dirt and are fed an all vegetable diet (corn, soybean meal & a vitamin/mineral package), no rendering plant animal by-product supplement, ever.
You can't believe the huge flavor difference in a porkchop between these hogs and those from a supermarket. Bacon is about 70% lean tissue.

It is amusing to read posters raving about the pork butts they "scored" at Costco or Sam's Club. It is sad that so many have no idea what quality farm raised pork (as opposed to factory raised) actually tastes like.
We ran once short of breakfast sausage so I "scored" 6 Sam's Club butts which after removal of the Coppa muscle was ground into sausage.
We normally grind our sausage twice (for seasoning flavor uniformity) through a 3hp Hobart 4732 grinder with a 3/16" plate, then stuff into 2 pound bags, the Sam's butts, however, completely turned to mush on the second grind despite being near freezing temperature. 
Suppose that's the difference between "the other white meat" and quality pasture raised pork_?_


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## daveomak (Feb 14, 2018)

OK....  Well most, probably all, folks here don't have vacuum tumblers... 

Anyway, brine curing calculations are very simple...
FWIW:
Weight of the meat in grams...
25% weight of the meat in water...
Total those numbers....
Add 2% in Kosher salt...
Add 1% in sugar...
Add 0.25% in Cure#1 ...
Place all in a zip bag... 
Rotate daily for 7 days per inch of thickness....

Using soup stock in place of water is a good thing..


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## bob-whie (Feb 14, 2018)

Hello Dave,
Thought there might be some interest in an accurate calculator, however, it's apparent there is zero interest. Perhaps the spreadsheet format probably is too complicated for average computer users.
Will let some time pass then give up on the endeavor.


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## dward51 (Feb 14, 2018)

A lot of us use spreadsheets!!!!!  And have vacuum tumblers too!!!!

Don't give up on this project.  There are some that will use it, some that will learn from it, and some that it will not apply to, but that's ok too....  Just one big happy diverse group of farking smokers here

I didn't have time to dive into the ratios tonight, but this is interesting and I think will be very helpful once the formulas are confirmed. That's the beauty of spreadsheets.


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