School me on curing salt

[Kyle Ss]

why is this necessary for things like pastrami?

 

[Dustin Dorsey]

The curing salt is what makes it taste like pastrami. Otherwise you have just have beef. Very briefly it's a preservative that helps prevent things like botulism, especially in cold smoked meats. The smoking and salting further works as a preservative. While we now have refrigeration that makes these things less necessary, cured meats taste awesome.

 

[ChuckO]

Here's a pretty dang good answer from believe it or not....wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation)

 

[Anne M.]

Yep, safety....

Try the www.meatsandsausages.com website.
Good info there and they have a good forum as well

 

[Timothy F. Lewis]

Anne, that's a really interesting site. Thanks for the link. If I had space, I'd build a drainpipe smoker!
And, thanks also to you ChuckO, something worthy from Wikipedia.