Homemade Sausage Making

Hi, Anyone know the ratio to substitute Dextrose for Sugar in a dry bacon cure ?
When I use sugar or honey I get burnt bacon, I had a recipe for cure with dextrose but it was way too salty and not measured by weight.
Thanks
Mark

Dextrose tastes about 75% as sweet (by weight) as plain sugar, so you could take the sugar weight in a recipe and multiply it by 1.33 to get the amount of dextrose for "equal sweetness".

I suspect it will burn at about the same cooking temperature as regular sugar or honey. I've used all 3 in candy making and they seem to react to heat about the same (like reaching hard ball stage).

For longer curing times, like with a salami, dextrose is often used along with plain sugar because dextrose breaks down in 2 stages, so it is available for the bacteria to feed on for a longer period than plain sugar, which breaks down faster in 1 stage. Not sure if that would matter one way or the other for a bacon cure, though.

Any sugar will burn and char. Per my wife, "the best way to cook sugar cured bacon is in the microwave". She does a good job with this too but I just can't bring myself to do this and tend to cook sugar cured bacon really slow and really well watched. And I still burn it sometimes but not so much.

For the last 6 years I've been cooking bacon in a cast iron skillet in the oven @ 350 deg. F. Flip it once after 10 min. or so and it'll be don in another 7 min..................then remove the bacon and crack an egg or two in the skillet in the oven. Perfect eggs...................

I have tried that also, now I just line sheet pans with foil lay out bacon put in cold oven
then set it at 400 deg. f . ( I learned this on the internet ) I don't turn mine over , when donees is reached I put on a paper
towl to drain and sprinkle with sugar of choice or syrup and save the grease for cooking
the sugar melts on the bacon.


Paul

The dextrose is what's used to activate any "friendly" cultures in the cure, and the sugar is what feeds them long term. If you replace sugar with dextrose, you will reduce any long term culture development - for what it's worth.