← Salting and brining
H53-01 · Module 1 of 7 · Pages: 23 · Worksheets: 6
Salting basics
How salt preserves meat, cheese, fish and vegetables, which salt to use for what, how to work out and measure a brine, which containers and space you need and what gets salted in which month
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In short
- Salt preserves food because it binds water and holds back bacteria. The less salt, the colder it must be: meat and fish are salted at 2–5 °C (36–41 °F).
- For salting use non-iodised salt, coarse or fine, with no additives that cloud the brine.
- Nitrite curing salt is a ready-made mix with roughly 0.4–0.6 % nitrite; Cure #1 (US, Canada) has 6.25 %. Both are always weighed, never pure nitrite or saltpetre "by eye".
- Salt by the scale, not by feel: the percentage of salt is worked out from the weight of the meat, cheese or vegetables.
- Quick rule: an X % brine ≈ X × 10 g of salt per 1 L of water. For strong brines use the table in this module.
- Containers: glass, glazed stoneware, wood, stainless steel, food-grade plastic. Never aluminium, galvanised metal or copper.
What's inside
Chapters
- How salt preserves food
- Kinds of salt: which is for what
- Four ways of salting
- Percentage of salt: how to work it out
- How to measure a brine
- Water, salt and containers
- Space and temperature
- What gets salted
- Safety in brief
- First season: a plan for beginners
- Common mistakes
- Printable checklist
Worksheets
- Yearly salting calendar
- Brine calculator
- Salt for the year calculator
- First-season plan
- Container and equipment inventory
- Shopping list
Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.
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