About this site
Brine Calculator is a free tool that answers how much salt and water a brine needs and how long the food should stay in it. The calculator gives the amounts, the guides explain each food, and the printable charts put the same numbers on one page each.
What the calculator covers
The calculator covers three kinds of brining:
- Wet brine. Meat, poultry and seafood in salt water. It gives the water, the salt by weight and by volume, and a time window.
- Dry brine. Meat salted directly with no water. It gives the salt by weight and by volume, and a time window.
- Vegetable ferments. Vegetables fermented in salt, either covered in brine or salted dry. It gives the salt, the water for brine styles, and the fermentation time at room temperature bands.
Salt is given by weight first, in grams and ounces, and then by volume for Diamond Crystal kosher salt, Morton kosher salt and table salt. The same volume of these salts weighs different amounts, so the calculator never gives a volume without naming the salt.
What the calculator does not cover
- Curing with nitrite or curing salt. Ham, bacon, corned beef and pastrami are cured, not brined. The calculator gives no amounts for curing.
- Canning. A ferment from this calculator is not canned food, and the site does not give canning procedures.
- Vinegar pickling. Pickles made with vinegar follow different rules from a salt ferment.
- Cheese and olive brines. These are outside the foods covered.
The calculator also does not give medical advice. The sodium note in a result is information from its source, not guidance for any one person.
Where the numbers come from
Every salt percentage, time and fermentation range comes from a published source. The sources are listed in the calculator's source pages: each guide ends with the pages it used, and the engine records the same sources for each food. The calculator prefers government food safety agencies, university extension services and meat science programs, and then established cooking publications.
Where sources disagree, the calculator uses the more conservative value, such as the lower salt percentage or the shorter maximum time. A food that does not have enough sources is left out of the calculator, not filled in with an estimate.
The salt volumes come from the weight of each salt type per spoon or cup, taken from the manufacturers' published figures, and are worked out from the weight of salt in the result.
How the safety messages work
Each result carries the messages from the sources for that food, such as where to keep the food while it brines and what to do with used brine. A warning appears in an amber panel. A plain note appears in a neutral panel.
A result is marked not recommended when the weight, the strength or the time goes past a limit in a source, for example a brine that would make the meat too salty, or a ferment with less salt than the sources say is reliable. The times are still shown, with the reason, so you can see what changed.
One engine for every table
The calculator, the tables in the guides and the printable charts all read from one engine. A table in a guide is generated from the engine when the site is built, so it matches the calculator. If a source changes, the engine changes, and every page follows.
Who runs the site
Brine Calculator is owned and operated by Nate and Kait LLC, a California limited liability company. Contact details are on the contact page, how the numbers are produced and tested is on the methods page, and what the site collects is in the privacy policy. The site may show advertising in the future, and the privacy policy covers how that works.