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Imperial here is by weight. Cups and spoons stay out in either system: what makes a recipe repeatable is the scale.

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Temperature

This applies to the calculated numbers. The explanatory text stays in Celsius, which is how the sources write it.

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Hides the method, divergence, glossary and sources sections, leaving the page with just the tool.

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Curing calculator

Nitrite in ppm, under the rule that applies here

Give the weight of the meat and the target in ppm; the calculator gives the curing salt to weigh. This is the one page on the site where getting the number wrong does not spoil dinner — it causes botulism. Every limit here comes from a regulation, with the legal text cited.

Before anything else

Curing is not seasoning. Nitrite exists to stop Clostridium botulinum producing toxin in an oxygen-free environment, which is exactly what the inside of a sausage is. Too little does not protect; too much is toxic. Weigh on a precision scale, never with a spoon, and never improvise the dose because the cut "is small".

Your cut

Meat and fat only. Seasoning and liquid do not count towards ppm.

The default is 150, within what both regulations support.

Curing salt

Nitrite only, no nitrate. For anything that will be cooked, cold smoked or eaten within days.

How you will cure it

The dose goes into the whole mass and stays there. This is the tighter case: a 156 ppm ceiling.

What to weigh

Curing salt2.4 g

Ordinary salt that comes with it
2.3 g

Curing salt is almost all ordinary salt. Subtract this from your recipe’s salt, or the product comes out too salty.

Ingoing nitrite
150 ppm

Ingoing nitrite

In range

Minimum ingoing: 120 ppm · Ceiling for this method: 156 ppm

Marianski & Marianski, cap. "Curing and Nitrates" — política de 120 ppm do FSIS · FSIS, 424.21(c), curing agents

The two limits, and why they do not compare

This is the most consequential divergence on the whole site, and nearly every English-language charcuterie calculator walks straight past it.

Ingoing — what you weigh

The United States caps how much may be added, and the figure changes with the method: 156 ppm in comminuted meat, 625 ppm in a dry cure. That is what this calculator computes, because it is what you have in your hand.

Residual — what remains in the finished product

Brazil regulates here instead: at most 150 mg/kg, counting nitrite and nitrate together and expressed as sodium nitrite. The United States allows 200 ppm residual. Residual cannot be computed from ingoing — nitrite reacts and decays during curing, and only analysis of the finished product measures what is left.

How the sum is done

Adding nitrite to nitrate is not adding the two numbers: they are different substances, and the norm speaks in sodium nitrite. Circular Letter 15/2009 from DIPOA, Brazil’s animal products inspection department, publishes the conversion — divide the nitrate by 1.231 and add it to the nitrite. For potassium nitrate, saltpetre, the divisor is 1.4637. The circular prints its own molar masses on the next line, which lets you check it against itself: 84.99 divided by 69.00 is exactly 1.2317.

With cure #2, which carries nitrate, this changes the picture. At the default target of 150 ppm of nitrite it brings 96 ppm of nitrate along — and the sum, in the norm’s currency, comes to 228 ppm. It is a figure nobody works out in their head, and it is what a lab analysis would measure. The calculator shows the arithmetic beside the result, and puts no pass mark next to it: what it computes is ingoing, and the 150 ppm ceiling is residual. The circular’s own section is headed "calculation of residual nitrite".

DIPOA, p. 5

And there is a third ceiling

The same circular lists three, not one: 150 ppm for nitrite alone, 150 ppm for nitrite combined with nitrate, and 300 ppm for nitrate alone. All residual. The norm it invokes is Instrução Normativa nº 51 of 2006, from Brazil’s agriculture ministry.

DIPOA, p. 2

The honest consequence: this calculator does not certify compliance with the Brazilian rule. It gives the ingoing figure, compares it against the US ceiling — the only ingoing one that exists — and makes clear that the Brazilian number is a different kind of thing. Anyone producing for sale needs laboratory analysis, not a calculator.

How the calculation works

Curing salt is ordinary salt with a small fraction of sodium nitrite in it. Cure #1 is 6.25% nitrite; European Peklosol, 0.6%. What the calculator does is cross-multiplication over that fraction: to reach 150 ppm of nitrite in a kilo of meat you need 0.15 g of nitrite, and to get 0.15 g of nitrite at 6.25% you weigh 2.4 g of cure #1.

What justifies the tool is not the algebra, it is the rest: the fraction changes with the product, the legal ceiling changes with the method, there is a floor below which curing does not protect, and the Brazilian limit is a different quantity from the American one. Four things that are easy to get wrong, with a serious consequence.

Every dose comes out in grams to one decimal place because that is how it gets weighed: a 0.1 g precision scale costs little and is the only acceptable instrument here. A teaspoon of curing salt runs from 5 to 7 g depending on the hand, which on a 1 kg cut is the difference between 130 and 180 ppm.

Common questions

How much cure #1 per kilo of meat?

For 150 ppm of ingoing nitrite, 2.4 g of cure #1 per kilo. Cure #1 is 6.25% sodium nitrite, so the sum is ppm × kilos ÷ 62.5. At 120 ppm it is 1.9 g, and at 156 ppm — the US ceiling for comminuted meat — it is 2.5 g.

What is the nitrite limit in Brazil?

The rule in force is ANVISA’s Normative Instruction 211/2023, which sets 150 mg/kg as the maximum residual — and it counts nitrite and nitrate together, expressed as sodium nitrite. Note that this is residual in the finished product, not what you weigh: different quantities.

Why do some say 150 and others 156?

Because they are comparing different things. The US 156 ppm is an ingoing limit for comminuted meat, what you add. The Brazilian 150 mg/kg is residual, what may remain in the finished product. On the same basis, maximum residual is 150 in Brazil and 200 in the United States.

Can I use less nitrite to be safer?

No. Too little nitrite is the dangerous side: it is what stops Clostridium botulinum producing toxin in a cured product. FSIS requires a minimum of 120 ppm ingoing in cured products kept refrigerated. Below that you have salted meat with a nice colour, not cured meat.

What is the difference between cure #1 and cure #2?

The #1 is nitrite only, 6.25%, and suits anything that will be cooked, cold smoked or eaten soon. The #2 adds 4% sodium nitrate, which converts to nitrite slowly, and is for cuts air-cured over weeks or months. In the United States nitrate is banned in bacon.

Where the sources disagree

Two regulations, two books, and three disagreements worth knowing.

TopicWhat each source saysWhat the calculator does
Legal limitANVISA: 150 mg/kg residual, counting nitrite and nitrate together. FSIS: 156 ppm ingoing in comminuted, 200 ppm residual.Shows both and says they are different quantities. Computes ingoing, which is what gets weighed, and promises nothing about residual compliance.
Working doseMarianski tabulates up to 156 ppm and calls it the maximum. Ruhlman uses 25 g of cure #1 for 11.25 kg, which is 139 ppm.The default is 150 ppm, which sits between the two and fits both regulations. Both figures appear, cited.
Nitrate in long curingMarianski: cure #2 for anything air-cured without cooking. ANVISA adds nitrate to nitrite under the same residual ceiling.With the #2, shows both in ppm separately, because that is how the Brazilian rule counts the total.

Glossary

ppm#
Parts per million. One ppm is one milligram per kilo. A hundred and fifty ppm of nitrite in 1 kg of meat is 0.15 g of nitrite — hence the need to dilute it in salt before it goes anywhere near a kitchen scale.Marianski & Marianski, cap. "Curing and Nitrates"
Ingoing#
How much nitrite is added to the meat, measured against its weight. It is what the calculator computes and what the US rule caps by method.FSIS, 424.21(c), curing agents
Residual#
How much nitrite remains in the finished product after reacting with the meat and decaying. It is what the Brazilian rule caps, and it is known only by laboratory analysis.ANVISA, Anexo, categoria 08.2 — conservadores INS 249 a 252 · FSIS, 424.21(c)
Cure #1#
Curing salt with 6.25% sodium nitrite and the rest ordinary salt, dyed pink so it cannot be mistaken for table salt. Also sold as Prague Powder #1, Insta Cure #1 or fast curing salt.Marianski & Marianski, cap. "Curing and Nitrates" · Ruhlman & Polcyn, cap. 2, "Salt" — sais de cura
Cure #2#
The same 6.25% nitrite plus 4% sodium nitrate. The nitrate works as a reserve: bacteria convert it to nitrite over weeks, which sustains protection in a cut that air-cures for months.Marianski & Marianski, cap. "Curing and Nitrates"
Clostridium botulinum#
The bacterium curing exists to hold off. It grows without oxygen, exactly the condition inside a sausage, and produces one of the most potent toxins known. It changes neither the smell nor the look of the product.Ruhlman & Polcyn, "How Real Is the Danger of Botulism?" (quadro) · Marianski & Marianski, cap. "Curing and Nitrates"

Sources for this calculator

Two regulations and two books. The limits come from the regulations, read in the original text; the books supply the composition of the curing salts and the working doses.