Curing Salt Substitutes: What Can Replace Cure #1 and Cure #2, and What Can’t

Out of curing salt? The only real substitute is another cure with a known amount of nitrite in it. Plain salt won’t do it, however good, and neither will anything from the spice aisle. The nitrite is the whole point: the American Meat Science Association’s review of curing names control of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium behind botulism, as the main reason nitrite goes into cured meat, and calls that effect “indisputable and well documented.”¹ Another brand of Cure #1 can stand in if you weigh carefully, Morton Tender Quick works in a recipe written for it, and if you have no cure at all, the safe move is to make the recipe as fresh meat.

Quick answer

If you don’t have any of the real substitutes, your best option is to make the recipe as fresh meat instead of cured meat. See the last section.

How the ratios on this page are labeled

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

Curing amounts aren’t like flavor ratios. They come from US meat regulations and the nitrite percentage printed on the cure’s label, and they’re set by the weight of the meat. Weigh both the meat and the cure.

If the cure is for meat that will be cooked

This is Cure #1’s job. It’s also sold as Prague Powder #1, pink curing salt or Insta Cure #1. Spice Jungle describes it as for meat that needs further cooking, smoking or canning.² Curing salt is ordinary salt carrying a small, measured dose of sodium nitrite, plus sodium nitrate in Cure #2.

1. Another brand of Cure #1

Ratio (Computed): US rules cap ingoing sodium nitrite in ground (comminuted) products at 1/4 oz per 100 lb of meat.³ USDA’s training calculations use a cure that’s 6.25% sodium nitrite.⁴ At that strength, 1 oz of cure per 25 lb of meat puts 0.0625 oz of nitrite into 400 oz of meat, or 156 ppm, right at the regulatory cap. The Sausage Maker gives 1 oz per 25 lb for its 6.25% cure and calls 156 ppm the maximum ingoing nitrite for ground meat.⁵ Spice Jungle labels its pink curing salt 6% sodium nitrite and gives the same 1 oz per 25 lb,² which works out to 150 ppm. Either brand at 1 oz per 25 lb stays within the cap, but check the percentage on the package you actually have before you swap.

In metric, 1 oz per 25 lb is about 2.5 g of cure per kilogram of meat, or about 1.1 g per pound. Those are tiny amounts, and a scale is the reliable way to hit them.

2. Morton Tender Quick

Tender Quick is a different product, not a stronger or weaker Cure #1. Its label lists salt, sugar, 0.5% sodium nitrate, 0.5% sodium nitrite and propylene glycol.⁶

Ratio (Attributed): Morton says to use 1 tablespoon (1/2 oz) of Tender Quick per pound of meat, rubbed in thoroughly, and to cure it in the fridge at 36 to 40 °F for 4 to 8 hours, or longer for thicker cuts, up to 24 hours. For a brine, dissolve 1 cup in 4 cups of cool water and cure for 24 hours. Morton cautions against using it at higher levels than specified.⁶

Why it works (Computed check): At Morton’s dry-cure rate, 1/2 oz of a 0.5% nitrite mix puts 0.0025 oz of nitrite into 16 oz of meat. That’s 156 ppm, the same as Cure #1 at its standard rate. The catch is volume. You use about 12.5 times as much Tender Quick by weight as Cure #1 (14.2 g per pound against 1.1 g), and the difference is salt and sugar. Drop Tender Quick into a Cure #1 recipe that also calls for its own salt, and it’ll come out far saltier. The label doesn’t give the split between salt and sugar, so there’s no way to work out how much of the recipe’s salt to remove. Use a recipe written for Tender Quick instead.

Tender Quick also contains nitrate. US meat-plant rules don’t allow nitrate in bacon,³ and the AMSA review explains that the ban lets nitrite levels be controlled more precisely.¹ So for bacon, Cure #1 is the closer match to those rules. That’s our reading of a rule written for inspected plants, not home kitchens.

If the cure is for a long dry cure eaten uncooked

Cure #2 has nitrate as well as nitrite. The Sausage Maker’s version lists 6.25% sodium nitrite and 1% sodium nitrate, and the maker names pepperoni, hard salami, Genoa salami, prosciutto and capicola as its uses.⁵ The AMSA review explains why the nitrate is there. Nitrate only cures once it’s reduced to nitrite, and it’s still used in dry sausages and dry-cured hams because their long maturing needs “a long term reservoir of nitrite.”¹

Cure #2 from another maker

Ratio (Method): These products aren’t cooked, and their safety depends on the whole process, not just the cure. We found no published way to convert a dry-cure recipe from one cure to another. Use a tested recipe written for the Cure #2 you have, and follow its amounts and process exactly. Cure #1 is not a substitute here, and The Sausage Maker says its Cure #2 isn’t for brine or wet curing.⁵

If you want a “natural” cure

Meat sold as “uncured” in the US is usually cured with celery. Celery powder is used widely as a vegetable source of nitrite in natural and organic meat. It only works because bacteria convert its nitrate to nitrite, either in the meat with a starter culture or before sale in “pre-converted” powders.⁷ These products are labeled “Uncured” and “No Nitrate or Nitrite Added” under USDA rules.⁸ In 2020, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said it intended to propose barring those claims on products processed with any source of nitrate or nitrite, celery powder included.⁹

A curing celery powder made for meat

Ratio (Attributed): Use the maker’s rate in a recipe written for it. Walton’s says to use its celery juice powder at 2 to 2.5 oz per 25 lb of product, aiming for 100 to 200 ppm ingoing nitrite.¹⁰ The Bearded Butchers sell a cultured celery powder in 2.5 oz packs, each for 25 lb of meat.¹¹ Neither product page gives a measured nitrite content, so these are makers’ directions, not a dose we could check.

Two cautions. A 2014 University of Wisconsin dissertation reviewing the research found that residual nitrite in alternatively cured products “can vary dramatically.” It also found they tended to carry less of it than conventionally cured products, and in the studies it reviewed, they allowed more growth of Listeria monocytogenes and Clostridium perfringens.¹² And celery juice or celery powder from the grocery store is a different product. It has no stated nitrate content and no maker’s curing rate, so it isn’t a cure at all.

What doesn’t work as a cure

Saltpeter (potassium nitrate). Saltpeter is the oldest curing agent on record. But it’s not a drop-in for Cure #1, for three reasons the sources make plain.

• It’s nitrate, and nitrate only works after bacteria reduce it to nitrite.¹
• US rules list sodium or potassium nitrate as a “source of nitrite,” allowed in cured meat products other than bacon, at no more than 3 1/2 oz per 100 lb of meat in a dry cure or 2 3/4 oz per 100 lb of chopped meat.³ Those are caps for inspected plants, not recipe amounts.
• The AMSA review records that “unsatisfactory and irregular curing was commonplace” in the past, links it to using nitrite and nitrate together, and notes a sharp drop in nitrate use by the meat industry between 1970 and 1974.¹

Ratio: None. We found no tested home conversion from Cure #1 or Cure #2 to saltpeter, so we don’t offer one. If a recipe is written for saltpeter and has been tested, follow it. Otherwise, use one of the cures above.

Sea salt, kosher salt or any other plain salt. Salt alone doesn’t produce cured color, according to the AMSA review, and it doesn’t supply the nitrite that controls C. botulinum.¹ We found no regulator or tested source with a salt-only method for products normally made with curing salt, so we don’t offer one either. Picking a non-iodized salt changes nothing here. You’ll often read that iodized salt gives cured meat an off taste, but America’s Test Kitchen’s tasters found no detectable difference between iodized and non-iodized salt,¹³ and the NIH notes that specialty salts like sea salt and kosher salt usually aren’t iodized anyway.¹⁴

Himalayan pink salt. Curing salt is pink only because it’s dyed, so nobody mistakes it for table salt.² Pink Himalayan salt has no added nitrite.

If you have no cure: make it as fresh meat

Leave the cure out and you don’t get a cured product made a different way. You get fresh meat, without the pink color and cured flavor that nitrite brings.¹ Treat it that way. USDA says fresh sausages “must be kept refrigerated and thoroughly cooked before eating,” and gives 160 °F as the cooking temperature for uncooked sausages made with beef, pork, lamb or veal, and 165 °F for those made with turkey or chicken. USDA’s storage chart gives fresh, uncooked sausage 1 to 2 days in the fridge.¹⁵ Skip any long air-drying or room-temperature step the cured recipe had.

Handling any cure safely

• FDA rules require curing preparations sold for home use to carry directions that keep the finished meat at no more than 200 ppm sodium nitrite, and to carry the warning “Keep out of the reach of children.”¹⁶
• Keep the cure in its labeled package, away from ordinary salt. In 2002, five adults in Yonkers, New York, developed methemoglobinemia after eating food seasoned from a bag labeled as table salt that actually held 100% sodium nitrite. All recovered.¹⁷

What isn’t known

• We found no tested home conversion between Cure #1, Cure #2, Tender Quick and saltpeter beyond what the makers and regulations state.
• Morton’s Tender Quick label doesn’t give the ratio of salt to sugar, so there’s no way to calculate the salt correction for using it in a Cure #1 recipe.
• We found no measured nitrite content for the curing celery powders named here, or for any spice-aisle celery product.
• We haven’t checked whether USDA finalized its 2020 proposal on “uncured” labeling.

Related

• Curing salt, celery powder and celery powder substitutes
• Pickling salt, kosher salt, sea salt and table salt
• Himalayan salt and iodized vs. non-iodized salt