If you are a lover of homemade tasty billets, then you probably thought about enjoying your own sausages. And, after reading the recipes for these delicious meat products, you met with an incomprehensible kind of ingredient - nitrite salt. What is it, why is it needed in the manufacture of sausages? And finally, where is nitrite salt (NS) sold at retail? We have prepared answers to these and other questions.
What is it?
Nitrite salt (where this product is sold at retail, we will definitely analyze further) is a combination of ordinary table salt and sodium nitrite. Today, the National Assembly completely replaced the saltpeter used before in the sausage industry.
Product features are usually as follows:
- Sodium chloride - 99.3%.
- Sodium nitrite - 0.5-0.6%.
- Insoluble H 2 O - 0.005%.
- Density - 1.25 g / cm 3 .
- White color.
- It has no smell.
- Consistency is powder.
- The taste is typical for table salt.
Depending on the concentration of sodium nitrate (NN) in the product, it can also be called peklosol, Prague salt, "instukur". The longer the sausage is stored, the less HH remains in it. For example, after 7 days, it will already be 60-70% less than this component than was introduced by the manufacturer. Sodium nitrate has a pinkish-reddish hue.
Thus, if you find the ingredient “saltpeter” in the old sausage recipe, then you need to look for where nitrite salt is sold at retail (in a pharmacy, store, online market). For more than 70 years, saltpeter has not been used in the meat industry. The fact is that it is much more dangerous than NS, since during its decay the amount of NN formed is difficult to control. With the correct dosage of nitrate salt by the end of the decomposition of NN, you will receive a sufficient and safe portion of this element for long-term storage of sausages, as well as an appetizing color and the smell of ham.
About dosage
The content of sodium nitrite in the NS is small - 0.5-0.6%. Thus, even if you slightly salt the minced meat, it will be impossible to poison them. Only a sausage that you simply cannot eat due to its excessive salinity will be harmful to your body. NS will not let you get poisoned with sodium nitrate, because it simply makes it impossible to eat food with a large content of it.
Whatever is written in the recipe, we recommend that you add HC no more than 10 g per 1 kg of minced meat. As a result, about 5-6 g of sodium nitrate will be released per 100 kg of the entire product. In the finished product, the NN content should decrease by another 20% as a result of reactions. A large dosage will not only be dangerous, but far from beneficial for your body.
By the way, if you look at recipes from stores where nitrite salt is sold at retail, you can see that a much larger dosage of salt is recommended there. Why? The explanation is simple: an entrepreneur needs to sell as much of his product as possible.
What gives sodium nitrite?
Many homemade sausage lovers are looking for where nitrite salt is sold at retail. What for? It's all about the effects that sodium nitrate causes:
- This is an excellent remedy against dangerous viruses and microorganisms. It is sodium nitrate that can destroy the causative agents of staphylococcus, botulism, salmonellosis.
- Excellent preservative - increases the shelf life of the product.
- Gives a delicious pinkish hue to sausage. If you have already been engaged in such blanks, then you know that the natural color of the finished product is grayish.
- Antioxidant (reduces the rate of fat oxidation). As a result, the fat will not "fall off" and be bitter.
- And finally, it is sodium nitrite that gives the sausage that wonderful taste and smell of ham.
Is nitrite salt dangerous?
Before looking for where nitrite salt is sold at retail in St. Petersburg or another city, we need to make sure that it is a safe product. Laboratory studies of the effects of sodium nitrite on the body have long been conducted. As a result of the experiment with mice, it was found that a semi-lethal outcome (when half of the total number of experimental subjects dies) occurs at a concentration of 180 mg NN per 1 kg of body weight. If we count for a person with an average weight of 70 kg, then for fatal poisoning there is enough to take 12.6 g of pure sodium nitrate.
If we turn to NS, then the LV content there will be 5-6 g per 1 kg of product. Using simple arithmetic, we can conclude that fatally poisoning with nitrite salt is possible only if you eat 2-2.5 kg of this product in one sitting, which, of course, is unrealistic.
Stocking Nuances
If you have already found where nitrite salt is sold at retail in Krasnodar, Moscow, St. Petersburg or Novosibirsk, we are in a hurry to tell you how to use it better. When preparing sausage, it is important to pay attention to several nuances:
- Be sure to warm the meat to room temperature before heat treatment. Otherwise, sodium nitrite will precipitate.
- If you want the color of the sausage to be appetizing pink, then hold the product overnight at average room temperature before heat treatment.
- The decomposition of NN accelerates the use of citric or ascorbic acid in the preparation of acids.
- The maximum shelf life of HC is 2 years.
Where is nitrite salt sold?
If you are looking for where nitrite salt is sold at retail, you are unlikely to find it in Auchan, Lenta and other universal hypermarkets. The best option is to go to an online search engine and find out which virtual and offline stores sell such a product in your city. Another way out is to order delivery of NS.
You can buy nitrite salt at retail in the following virtual markets:
- Syrodelkin.ru.
- Krasticrab.ru.
- Kolbasadoma.ru.
- "Emkolbaski".
- "Monarch".
- "Making sausages."
- Flagma.
- "Everyone's taste."
- "Biostar Culinary".
- Zdoroveevo and many others.
Let's look at the average prices of nitrite salt in case you purchase it at retail:
- 100 g - 50 rubles.
- 200 g - 100 rubles.
- 500 g - 200 rubles.
- 1 kg - 350 rubles.
For comparison: a wholesale purchase of nitrite salt will cost 30-40 rubles per kilogram.
So, to summarize all that has been said. Nitrite salt is an important modern (replaced saltpeter) ingredient in the manufacture of sausages both at home and in the industrial environment. It is sodium nitrate contained in it that kills harmful microorganisms in minced meat, serves as a preservative, and improves the taste and color of the product. If the correct dosage is observed, NS is harmless to the body. Fatally poisoning NN with the use of nitrite salt is physically impossible.