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I have a recipe for pastrami that calls for 1 T of pink salt + 3/4 cup of kosher salt. I don't have access to pink salt or saltpeter, but I do have Morton® Tender Quick®. I imagine that I can use the Tender Quick® in place of the pink salt and reduce the kosher salt, but I don't know how much to use or how much to reduce the salt. Is there a standard conversion?

Ray
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  • Maybe you should just find a recipe for pastrami that uses Tender Quick instead? You could incorporate other parts of your recipe if there are differences besides the curing agent. – Cascabel Dec 10 '11 at 21:01
  • My understanding is that TQ is just salt+saltpeter; I'm just not sure of the proportion or how to substitute. It seems like it should be a simple conversion... – Ray Dec 11 '11 at 00:40
  • I'm essentially suggesting deducing the conversion by comparing your recipe and one using TQ. Also, I don't have a box in front of me, but Morton's website says it also contains sugar. – Cascabel Dec 11 '11 at 00:42
  • Please list how much and what kind of sugars are in your recipe as a conversion will entail those numbers – mfg Dec 15 '11 at 19:07

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This question is almost entirely a duplicate of this one on corned beef, sodium nitrite and Tender Quick.. Please see the answers for that question.

The only thing not covered in that question are the proportions of salt, sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate in Tender Quick. You would need to calculate those ratios, and compare them with the ratios in pink salt + kosher salt called for in the recipe. This information is not available on the Morton's web site; you will have to call them to get those proportions.

Community
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FuzzyChef
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1 tbs. TQ per pound of meat but you must eliminate any other salt called for in the recipe. Personally I quit using TQ and exclusively use pink salt as it produces a much nicer color to the finished product.

Tom
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