Salt percentages for wet brines and dry cures, by weight
Members get the full set of kitchen calculators. Everything below on this page is free to read.
The reference tables and worked examples further down this page are free for everyone.
Every brine recipe you have ever read is really one number wearing a disguise: the weight of salt as a percentage of something else. Get that number and the quantities follow from whatever you happen to have in front of you.
The catch is a percentage of what. In a wet brine it is the weight of the water — a 5% brine is 50 g of salt per litre. In a dry cure it is the weight of the meat itself. Mixing those two up is the single most common way to ruin a piece of pork.
| Use | Strength | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Quick brine, chicken breast or pork chop | 5–6% of water | 1–2 hours |
| Whole chicken | 5% of water | 4–8 hours |
| Turkey | 5% of water | 12–24 hours |
| Dry cure, bacon or pork belly | 2.5–3% of meat | 5–7 days |
| Dry cure, salmon or gravlax | 3% of fish | 12–48 hours |
| Seasoning fish before cooking | 3% of water | 15–30 minutes |
Salt does two things. It seasons past the surface, which no amount of sprinkling at the end will do, and it changes the proteins so they hold on to more of their own moisture during cooking. That is why a brined chicken breast survives being slightly overcooked and an unbrined one does not.
A dry cure does the same job with less mess and no dilution of flavour. Salt the meat, put it in a bag or on a rack in the fridge, and let the moisture it draws out be reabsorbed. For anything you plan to roast, dry curing usually gives a better result than a wet brine, because you are not adding water to something you want to brown.
These percentages are by weight, which sidesteps the biggest trap in brining: a tablespoon of fine table salt weighs roughly twice what a tablespoon of flaky sea salt does. If a recipe gives you salt in spoons, it is only correct for the exact salt the author had. Weigh it.
Nothing here covers nitrites. Curing salt — pink salt, Prague powder, Cure #1 — is a food-safety ingredient for long cures and cold smoking, used at strictly controlled amounts, and it is not interchangeable with ordinary salt. If you are curing anything for more than a few days, or cold smoking, follow a tested recipe for that specific product rather than a percentage from a calculator.
Brining is a percentage, not a recipe. Once you know the weight of what you are curing, or the volume of the brine, the salt follows from a single number — and getting that number right is the difference between seasoned and inedible.
