In fairness to Michael Ruhlman he explains his definition of pink salt on page 38 of his book. He even gives the reason he uses this term but you committed an error I think we are all guilty of which is jumping to the meat of the subject without spending time reading and understanding the fundamentals. I'm not knocking you by any means because I'm the world's worst at this because as I've read books on this subject the words often times turn from information to yada yada yada and I go into a trance. Sometimes I've experienced epiphanies after simply reading one sentence which I had read at least three times an gleaned nothing then WHAM it hits me and the dots are connected. I feel good about my new revelation then its back to yada yada yada.Kijek wrote:As dumb as I am, I knew that one.perennial question whether Pink Himalayan salt is the same?
Me too, that's what screwed me up.wish that people would stop using the term "pink" salt
What I'm trying to say is there are so fine little details to this art. And it is art. Its much easier shown than taught by words but I think Marianski and others have done an excellent job putting this information in words.
Again, I'm not poking fun at you by any means as I think both Bob and Redzed both remember my train wreck several years ago where I was making a sausage that called for the addition of 5 lbs of bacon. In my world bacon is cured and smoked and you eat it with eggs. However, I soon learned that bacon also means uncured unsalted pork belly in other parts of the world. I also learned that you can make 25# of sausage with a salt concentration so high it is inedible even in the opinion of your dogs.
So, no, I'm not poking fun at you in any way its just that a lot of this yada yada stuff is very important and there is no way you will learn it overnight. There will train wrecks but a lot of these wrecks can be mitigated by your listening to your gut. My 25#'s of salt lick sausage could have easily been avoided because my gut was screaming at me that it was going to be too salty but I put the words of the recipe above my good sense. When you do this and it ends in a train wreck all you can do is laugh at yourself and move on.
In summary, remember if it calls for pink salt they are talking about cure 1 and if they call for bacon they are talking about fresh uncured pork belly and not the stuff you eat for breakfast.