고기 1kg당 발색제(큐어링 솔트) 사용량과 보툴리누스 중독 위험이 있는 병조림

The short answer: for sausage and mince, weigh out 20–24 g of nitrite salt (0.5% nitrite) or 2.5 g of Cure #1 (6.25% nitrite) per kilo of meat and fat. The two aren't interchangeable: Cure #1 is twelve times stronger. And no amount of boiling makes a sealed jar of meat, fish, mushrooms or beans fit to keep on a shelf: those need a pressure canner.

How much curing salt per kilo of meat

What counts is the nitrite that goes in, so the dose depends on how strong your salt is. The label says. If yours doesn't, don't guess.

Those doses come from the rules below. The rules bind food producers rather than home kitchens, but they're the best yardstick there is:

• United States. 9 CFR 424.21 allows 1/4 oz of nitrite per 100 lb of chopped meat, which works out to 156 mg per kg, and 1 oz per 100 lb of dry-cured meat, which is 625 mg per kg.
• European Union. Since 9 October 2025, Regulation (EU) 2023/2108 allows 80 mg of nitrite per kg in most meat products, the same as 120 mg of sodium nitrite. Until then it was 150 mg.
• The floor. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency asks for at least 100 ppm of nitrite or nitrate, with at least 2.5% salt, to keep botulinum in check in fermented meat.

So 100–120 mg per kg clears all three. The older rule of thumb of 25–30 g of 0.5% salt gives 125–150 mg: inside the US limit, over the EU's current one.

• Weigh it. Spoons are too rough for amounts this small. A scale that reads 1 g will do for nitrite salt; Cure #1 needs one that reads 0.1 g.
• Nitrite salt is your salt. It replaces the salt in the recipe: 20–24 g per kilo is already 2–2.4% salt. Cure #1 goes in on top of the ordinary salt.
• A dose needs a weight. “40 g of curing salt” means nothing until the recipe says for how much meat.

The mistake that matters most: swapping the two salts

Recipes from Germany, Russia or Ukraine usually mean nitrite salt. American ones mean Cure #1. A recipe that has been translated, or read out in a video, often just says “curing salt” and a number, and the number is only right for one of them.

• Cure #1 at a nitrite-salt dose. 20 g of Cure #1 per kilo puts in 1,250 mg of nitrite, eight times the US limit, so a 200 g portion would start out holding 250 mg. The FAO/WHO expert committee puts the lethal oral dose at 0.18 to 2.5 g, the lower figures being for children and old people.
• Nitrite salt at a Cure #1 dose. 2.5 g of 0.5% salt per kilo is 12.5 mg of nitrite: next to nothing, in a sausage you believe is cured.
• Himalayan “pink salt”. It's table salt and cures nothing, whatever the recipe that said “pink salt” meant.
• Pure nitrite. One teaspoon holds more than that lethal dose. It doesn't belong in a home kitchen.
• Saltpetre. It's nitrate, which turns into nitrite slowly, so it belongs only in long dry cures. The US limits are 2 3/4 oz per 100 lb of chopped meat (1.7 g per kg) and 3 1/2 oz per 100 lb for a dry cure (2.2 g per kg).

When a sausage needs a cure at all

Botulinum grows where there's no air, and the middle of a sausage has none. So a sausage or mince that's dried, fermented or cold-smoked needs a curing agent, while a fresh one cooked straight away doesn't. Whole cuts cured with plain salt, like salo or basturma, are a different process: this rule is about mince.

A wet brine is a different sum

Only part of a brine enters the meat, so it holds far more cure per liter than a sausage holds per kilo. What counts is what the meat takes up. For example, 150 g of 0.5% nitrite salt per liter, in a ham that takes up a fifth of its weight in brine, puts in about 150 mg of nitrite per kg, and the US limit for pumped or immersion-cured meat is 200 mg. So don't read a brine's numbers as a sausage's, or the other way round. A rub that's washed off counts the same way.

Which jars risk botulism

Botulinum spores survive boiling. Sealed away from air in a food that isn't acid enough, they wake up and make a toxin you can't see, smell or taste. The line is pH 4.6. Above it, the CDC and the USDA home canning guide accept one method: a pressure canner, which reaches 116–121 °C (240–250 °F). A boiling-water bath, the oven or a multicooker's “canning” button can't.

• Need a pressure canner: meat, poultry, fish, mushrooms, beans, peas, corn and potatoes, and soups or stews with them. So does any vegetable put up in plain water, salt or oil with no acid at all.
• Protected by acid: pickles, jams and fruit compotes. That's why the vinegar isn't only there for the taste. Tested recipes count on vinegar of at least 5%, so don't cut it or water it down. Tomatoes are borderline: the USDA adds 2 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice per quart (about a liter).
• Mushrooms and beans with no pressure canner go in a jar only as a pickle from a tested recipe, far sourer than an everyday one.
• Garlic or herbs in oil: keep them in the fridge and throw them away after 4 days, the CDC says.

A jar won't warn you, so never taste to check. Throw out a jar that leaks, bulges or spurts when opened, and food that's discolored, moldy or smells bad. The CDC also advises boiling low-acid home-canned food and home-canned tomatoes in a saucepan for 10 minutes before eating, plus a minute for each 1,000 feet of altitude, because heat destroys the toxin.

Double vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, trouble swallowing or breathing and muscle weakness are signs of botulism, and it's an emergency: go to the emergency room at once. Too much nitrite is an emergency too, with blue lips, headache, dizziness and shortness of breath.

Where iwant2eat fits

iwant2eat is a private home for your own recipes, including the ones from old notebooks and translated videos, where these mistakes live. An automatic check reads every recipe you add, works out the dose per kilo and marks in red what could really harm: too much curing salt, a curing agent with no dose, a sealed jar of meat or mushrooms, garlic kept in oil. Set the salt you actually have, and a recipe written for the other one shows the converted amount, with the same nitrite and the plain salt to add back.

It's a help, not a guarantee. The check can be wrong or miss things, it doesn't judge how much vinegar a jar of vegetables has, and no mark doesn't mean a recipe is safe. Weigh the cure yourself.

Figures checked in November 2026 against the sources linked above. Rules change, so check yours if you sell what you make.