Table salt seasons the meat and pulls moisture out of it. Curing salt does both of those things and adds sodium nitrite, which is what protects the pork through the days it spends curing in the fridge and what gives bacon its familiar pink colour and cured flavour. They are not interchangeable in either direction: swapping curing salt for table salt takes the protection out of a cure, and using curing salt as a seasoning at the table is simply not what it is for.
That is the difference in a nutshell. Here is what each one is actually doing to a side of pork belly, and why our kit cure contains both plus a couple of other things.
What does plain salt do in a cure?
Two jobs, and the first is the big one. Rubbed into pork belly and left in the fridge, salt draws moisture out of the meat over several days. That is why a properly cured piece comes out denser and firmer than the slack raw belly that went in, and why home-cured bacon fries rather than leaking water into the pan the way wet-cured supermarket bacon does.
Less free moisture also means a less comfortable environment for anything to grow in, so salt is genuinely part of the preservation and not just a flavour. The second job is the obvious one: it seasons the bacon, and it is the reason rinsing after curing is a step you do not skip.
What salt alone cannot do is protect the meat through the slow middle of a multi-day cure, which is the specific job the next ingredient turns up to do.
What does curing salt add?
Sodium nitrite, and in some blends sodium nitrate as well. Curing salt sold on its own is usually a blend of salt and sodium nitrite dyed pink, so that nobody mistakes it for the salt cellar, and it is intended for short cures measured in days. Bacon is the textbook example.
The nitrite protects the meat while it cures. It is also what turns a piece of salted pork into something that tastes and looks like bacon: the pink colour and the particular savoury, cured flavour both come from this part of the mix rather than from the salt.
This is why we say the cure is not a seasoning. You can decide how salty you want your finished bacon. You do not get to decide how much cure to use, because that quantity is doing a job that has nothing to do with taste.
Can you substitute one for the other?
No, and it is worth being blunt about both directions.
- Table salt in place of curing salt. You are removing the ingredient that protects the meat across the curing days, so you are no longer following the recipe you thought you were following. Salt-only cures do exist, but they are a different method with a different result: greyer colour, different flavour and a shorter life.
- Curing salt in place of table salt. Never. It goes in a cure, in the quantity a recipe specifies, and nowhere near your cooking. Keep any tub of it clearly labelled, away from the cooking salt and out of reach of children.
- Reducing the cure to make milder bacon. Also no. Rinse more thoroughly instead, which is the proper lever for saltiness.
What is in our kit's cure?
Our bacon making kit contains a traditional dry cure: a mix of salt and sugar with sodium nitrite (E250) and sodium nitrate. The sugar balances the salt and helps the bacon colour in the pan, so it is not there purely for sweetness.
Crucially, it arrives pre-measured for the recipe in the booklet. There is no weighing, no percentages and no arithmetic, which removes the single most error-prone step in home curing. You rub it evenly into pork belly, refrigerate it for the time the booklet gives, rinse it off, pat it dry, and air dry it hanging in the fridge before slicing. Then pick one of the three seasonings, pancetta, fennel and juniper, or chilli and garlic, to flavour it.
In an ideal world we would leave the nitrites out. In a normal kitchen, this is the easiest and safest way to cure bacon at home, and we would rather explain that than quietly hope nobody reads the ingredients.
What about the pink salt in the biltong kit?
Different pink, different thing entirely, and this trips people up constantly. The biltong seasoning contains Himalayan pink salt, which is a rock salt used as ordinary seasoning. It contains no curing agent and it is not a curing salt, despite the colour.
Our biltong and jerky kits use no cure at all, just the seasoning blends and, for biltong, cider vinegar. Nothing preserves those except thorough drying, the salt in the seasoning and, in the biltong, the vinegar in the marinade. So if you have both kits in the cupboard, the bacon cure is the only sachet in the box doing curing work.
How do you control the saltiness of the finished bacon?
With the rinse, not with the cure. When the curing time is up, rinse the excess cure off under cold water and pat the meat thoroughly dry before it goes back in the fridge to air dry. How thoroughly you rinse is the main thing standing between you and salty bacon.
If a batch still comes out too salty, soak it in cold water for an hour before drying to draw the excess out. And next time, do not exceed the curing time in the booklet: leaving it an extra day in the hope of a firmer result is the most common cause of bacon that is too salty to enjoy.
Going the other way, bacon that is wet or not firm needs longer in the fridge, and it is worth checking whether the cure was rubbed in evenly, since a patchy rub gives you one good end and one soft one. Whatever the salt level, always cook home-cured bacon through before you eat it.
Curing salt FAQs
What is the difference between curing salt and table salt?
Table salt seasons and draws moisture out of meat. Curing salt does that and adds sodium nitrite, which protects the meat through a multi-day cure and gives bacon its pink colour and cured flavour.
Can I use ordinary salt to cure bacon?
Not as a substitute inside our kit's recipes. Salt-only cures exist as a separate method, but they give a different product with a greyer colour, a different flavour and a shorter life.
Is Himalayan pink salt a curing salt?
No. It is a rock salt used for ordinary seasoning, and it is what you will find in our biltong seasoning. Curing salts are dyed pink so they are not mistaken for cooking salt, which is a different thing that happens to share a colour.
Why does the kit cure contain sugar as well?
The sugar balances the salt and helps the bacon colour in the pan. It is part of a traditional dry cure rather than an optional sweetener.
My bacon is too salty, what should I do?
Rinse it more thoroughly after curing and soak it in cold water for an hour before drying. Next time, keep to the curing time in the booklet rather than going over it.
Want the cure already measured out for you? The dry cure bacon kit is part of our meat making kits.
