3 ms·
please explain how increased purity makes the compound less suitable, not MORE, for household use? our “kitchen lab” has all sorts of chemically pure ingredient
by yababa_y 4y ago
please explain how increased purity makes the compound less suitable, not MORE, for household use? our “kitchen lab” has all sorts of chemically pure ingredients and I feel comfortable knowing there aren’t random impurities in my “house grade” feedstocks.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bastawhiz 4y agoThe purity of food grade sodium nitrate is 6% percent, and then you mix it with salt. The purity of what Amazon is selling is ~99%. Purity here doesn't mean the rest is impurities, it means the percent of what you're buying is that compound. The rest is usually common salt, in this case. The reason it's done like this is so mixing up a teaspoon and a tablespoon isn't a lethal difference. The LD_lo of sodium nitrite is a bit over 5g for a 75kg person. You use an ounce of 6% sodium nitrite to cure about 25kg of meat. That's about 28g, or 1.7g of pure sodium nitrite. The equivalent lethal dose of what Amazon is selling is equal to ~three ounces of the stuff you use for food (enough for 75kg of meat), which ends up looking like a teaspoon at 99% purity. Do you have the confidence to correctly use a compound to cure meat where (for household use) curing 5kg requires so little chemical that you'd need to pinch it onto a scale?