Smoking Bacon and Salmon

I want to smoke some bacon and salmon by following the recipes in Michael Ruhlman's book "Charcuterie". Both of these call for pink salt. From what I can gather, pink salt is the same as Prague Powder except the pink powder is dyed pink and Prague Powder is white. Is that correct? I also have Morton Tender Quick which has a sodium nitrate content of .5% along with salt and sugar. Can this be used equal to the amount of salt, sugar and pink powder in the recipe?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me. While I have dabbled a bit in this, I have not had a lot of experience with smoking these types of things.

Elsie
Generally Pink Salt is salt containing Iron Oxide however in cooking it is a different salt and so is confusing for many.

Here is the best explanation from Wikipedia ( my favourite reference on the internet)
"Pink Salt is a rock salt mined in several parts of the world, including Hawaii, Utah (?RealSalt), Bolivia, the Murray-Darling basin of Australia, Peru, Pakistan (?Himalayan salt), and Poland. The color results from iron oxide.

In charcuterie, pink salt refers to Prague Powder #1, which is a curing salt containing 6.25% sodium nitrite to 93.75% sodium chloride, glycerin, and FD&C Red No. 3 food coloring to distinguish it from table salt. Sodium chloride's prevalence in pink salt makes it easier to measure for small batches of cured meat—1 teaspoon cures 5 lbs of meat."

Hope this is of a help to you.

Regards

Hi Phil:

I know about the pink salt - also black salt, as I have some of both from Hawaii. I was refering to the pink salt in Charcuterie. The Prague Powder that I have is white, not pink. It does not say Prague # 1 or Prague #2, just Prague Powder. There is no other useful info on the bag. Does this mean it is (charcuterie)
(pink) salt without the food colouring? Am I making any sense?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Elsie D.:
Hi Phil:

I know about the pink salt - also black salt, as I have some of both from Hawaii. I was refering to the pink salt in Charcuterie. The Prague Powder that I have is white, not pink. It does not say Prague # 1 or Prague #2, just Prague Powder. There is no other useful info on the bag. Does this mean it is (charcuterie)
(pink) salt without the food colouring? Am I making any sense? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Perfect sense. Praque powder can also be white. The colouring is generally to make it stand out from normal salt.

Regards

Well, whew! I can now make or at least get started on my brine. Thank you!

I have relatives in Australia - in Perth. In the early '50s there was a migartion of folks from Holland - some went to Canada (the land of the frozen north) and one of my mother's brothers went to Perth (wonderful climate) with his family. I always wondered why they got so lucky, climate-wise.

I am new to posting from photobucket so I don't know if it's going to work. Here is my attempt to post a picture of some cold-smoked salmon I made on Saturday with a lot of e-mail help from Don Thompson.I brined the salmon for 48 hours, let it form a pellicule in the fridge for 24 hours and smoked it in my Weber performer using the Smokenator for 6 hours. Tasty stuff.


http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss9/ElsieD_photos/IMG_2026.jpg[/img] ]Cold-smoked salmon