Kent wrote:

> Reg, if you assume TQ is 98% or so NaCl, the salt concentration of the brine
> cure recipe on the TQ label is 40%. They say one cup TQ to 4 cups H20.
> That's almost poisonous. Even if the salt to sugar ratio was-is 50% the
> brine would be 20+-% NaCl. That's half poisonous. To eat that much salt you
> would have to take a diuretic like thiazide before eating.

It's not 98% salt, it's 97%. That's been disclosed by Morton.
Now do the remaining math. It's also 0.5% nitrite and 0.5%
nitrate, plus trace amounts of glycol.

How much sugar would that make it, then?

Another (rather obvious) test: taste it. No sugar.

BTW, the high level of salt in the recipe on the package
results in an overly salty product, but it's hardly anything
unusual. People have been using saturated salt solutions
to cure meat since forever. It's as old as curing itself.

--
Reg