Im a 2% guy, typically I'll round down if using curing salt and go 1.6% if adding cheese or bacon. I've definitely got a higher salt tolerance than some (age 32). Funny enough during the Super Bowl I fed 4-5 people aging from 24-36 a 2% sausage and asked them if it was too salty, they all said "its perfect but don't add any more"

65 years old. I'm a 1.5% guy. Been making sausage for 6 years. Used commercial mixes at first. Most are way too salty. Been making my own mixes for over 5 years. Love your knowledge and your show. Great video.

I like these sausage break downs. I hope you do more videos like with other very important ingredients that goes in to the sausage.

Welp I'm sold. I did 2% for the longest time but the fact 1.5 did good protein extraction and I often add extra seasoning and flavorings to try 1.5% next. Awesome video. Thank you

Funny never thought in percentages. The formula we use for dried sausages we use 1lb salt and 4.3 oz pink cure for 80lbs of meat amazing comes out to 1.5% 20.3 ounces divided by 1,280 (80x16). I use the same formula for fresh Italian but omit the cure so 1 lb salt divided by 80 is 1.25%. The cured and fresh doesn’t taste salty to me and I’m 73 but been using this formula since I was 60 or a little younger. I should also say I add pepper sauce to my sausage both cured and fresh. Hot pepper sauce for hot and sweet pepper sauce for plain sausages. Great show keep it up

I found your channel from @ChudsBbq; the two of you have been a wealth of knowledge. I have been making breakfast sausage for a long time. Thanks to your two channels I have made my first batch of linked pork sausage for the Super Bowl. They were a hit; I am looking forward to learning and making more in the future. Thank you for all the information.

I am 43 and I use 1.47% in fresh sausage....this video was informative...I would love this breakdown with cured cacciatore sausage....I have been making cured sausage for many year with Italian relatives and I am just about sick of hearing all the different way to measure salt. The best measurement I got was for every bread size pile of meat ....you should one handful of salt (Zio Philipo's hand). Thanks dad now its all clear.

I am following your recipes exactly and always comes out very good thanks

I'm a 2% guy, and I'm 43. My wife (same age) and kids all love that level too. We tend to eat more Paleo/Keto/low carb, and salt is needed to be increased on these diets, so out tastes for salt are typically a little higher than our friends or parents (say for salting steaks, etc), but even our friends and parents love our sausage at those levels.

Well done. 1.3-1.5%, but I only make breakfast sausage and freeze it, no curing salts. Smaller fat cap, more salt. I am 64. Thank you. God Bless and stay safe

52 yo, I’m a 1.5%-er, and always thought that a titch salty. But today I learned I need to count the curing salt as part of that! Duh. Thanks! Love your recipes but this was a top 3 vid of yours for me, awesome job.

Great video Eric. I'm 75 and I knew at the start of your video I would be in the 1.5 to 1.8 % camp. Of course, if using cure adjusting for that. Thank you for your channel.

Great video Eric. I'm 63 and I usually start my new recipes at 1.8% salt and I adjust that if using curing salt.

very informative, started out using commercial pre-mixes but find them too salty, so I make my own, some of your recipes are brilliant. about 1.5% toal salt for me. 66 years young.

I love that you guys asked for input before making this video! That said, I'm sticking with my 1.75%. :)

This is an awesome video. Great visual and explanation to help the sausage makers out there understand. Well done Eric!

I use 5% salt. _I can't understand why my blood pressure is always so high._ 🤣 Thanks for another great video Eric! 1.3% it is! (I'm an old guy)

My sweet spot is about 1.5%. I'm just about 60 now and have been making sausage for about 15 years. I haven't noticed any change in my palate relative to getting older (though other factors do sometimes factor in). I've grown accustomed to my recipes, which may explain the lack of change. Another great video, btw. Thanks!

I'd say 1.5-2. To be honest, it's what the recipe calls for and adjusted as necessary for taste. Curious though, what your thoughts are when a recipe calls for brown sugar. As the sugar has a tendency to mask the salt. Also we've noticed a difference in taste when using kosher salt compared to table salt. TYFS, another great demonstration.

I’m 35. I started at 1.5% but have gradually increased as I’ve gotten older. I’m at 1.7-2% depending on the kind of meat and whether there are any other “salty” components in my sausage. Keep up the great work Eric!

What a great video! Appreciate the clarity and work you put into this.

Great video. I am amateur saussage maker for 10 years. I am 54. I prefer 2% with 10% water added. Again great channel and informative video

When i caught the 'cough cough' it left me with an inability to taste salt for nearly two years. You could have put 7.5% and i couldn't taste it, i could taste foods and flavors just not the salt. It was a strange time in many ways and i dont miss it. Imagine dumping copious amounts of salt on eggs and no effect, i put the salt shaker away because i knew my blood pressure would have been in the 200/160 range if i went by my tastebuds. i was gifted my salt shaker back around christmas time and it started a yearly joke of gifting me a salt and pepper set for christmas... So it started a family tradition i think. 40 years old going on 85

My sweet spot is 1.3% for pork, seafood, and Chicken (white meats), 1.5% for beef and lamb(red meats). I find most sausage at BBQ joints is too salty around 2.0%. 48. My entire family, kids and adults, prefer 1.3%. Anything over 1.5 and the too salty complaints roll in. Must be genetic.

Hi Eric. Another stellar video! My wife and I started making our own Italian sausage several years ago. Pork, salt and black pepper. We find 1.8% to be the perfect amount for us. I’m 65 and my bride is 61.

Well, as a rookie sausage maker, I just made my first sausage that was of my own recipe a few days ago. My wife is very sensitive to anything with heat, to include black pepper. She also really likes chicken so I decided to challenge myself and make her an 80% chicken sausage (60 white, 20 dark with skin, 20 fatty pork). I went with a roasted garlic, green onion, rosemary spice profile and (wait for it) 2.5% salt. On the test patty my first thought was it was too salty. She said don't change a thing. After the links were made and they sat overnight we both loved it just like it was. I'm 57 and she's 60 😁 I could definitely see hovering closer to 2% with other flavor profiles though and I still have LOTS of practice/experimentation ahead. Loving your channel!

I love the experiment. I make sausage for a bbq company and I have to follow their ratios. They do it around 1.7 and 1.9 depending on the other seasonings and meat type ratios. I’m 61 and I like my sausage 1.7 tops. With garnish, I think the salt content (after texture) is negotiable.

Once agen excellent focused information that helps me understand were I'm going wrong or Wright,not a lot of flakey bs that terns me off,your really one of the best channels I watch,keep up the good work,thanks!

I'm 69 years and prefer a 1% total salts flavor. I'll extend the mix time a bit to get more protein extraction but find doing so can break down cheese or vegetable additions, which is a bummer. You timing with this post is perfect Eric, as I'm doing another batch today! I'll try a 1.25% and 1.5% (shorter mix) and see how it goes! Thanks!!

Per your request: I'm 70 years old and limit my fresh sausage making to only a handful of types i.e. Italian (I use salt, parsley, red pepper flakes, grated parmesan cheese and sometimes fennel seeds), keilbasa (only salt pepper and garlic) and jalapeno-cheddar links. My personal taste runs to 2.25% for all of these sausages...I like fresh sausage on the salty side. Anything fermented is always calculated at 3%. I also feel that a binder i.e. potato starch, powdered milk, carrot binder etc, lends to the texture and juiciness of any given recipe! Hope this helps with your research! As always, great video!

Outstanding teaching moment, as always, Eric! Since I am in the "must-have" curing salt camp, I'm thinking: Start with required grams of Pink Salt for meat weight, and then add Diamond Crystal Kosher salt until 1.5-6% is reached.

Ok, I'll play. 65 year old male making sausage since 1982, some 40 years. Fresh sausage works well for me at 1.8%, while cured runs 1.8% to 2.0%.

I made a 2% and the family felt it was a bit too salty (my wife and I are 48, son is 18) - Ive settled into 1.5%, but I’ll often add cheese, or bacon, or curing salts, so I prob end up around 1.7%

You KNOW I love experiments and you have completely absorbed my attention! Absolutely love this video! I never thought about age dictating the desire for salt!!!! I’m 45 and love 1.5 tsp per pound!

First batch of sausages, age 75 years nearly. 1.5% salt and felt it was at the very maximum. May use slightly less next time. Love the quality and clarity of the information. Thank you.

Love your channel - great information as always. My wife and I are in the 60 - 70 year old range and we prefer about 1.7%

Great video ~ ver informative. I'm personally a 2% guy, because I find once you add other seasonings then smoke it, and even more so if you add sausage to a sandwich you need the extra salt for the meat to stand out.

Wow! I have learned so much from your videos. I can’t thank you enough! My sausage has improved greatly!

I'm 45, and most of my recipes use 1.35%, but I have a couple at 1.5%. I flipped through a couple of Marianski's books to see if the older shelf stable recipes used heavy salt. I thought they would, but not really. Most his recipes were in the range of 1.8-2%, but most were at 1.8%, even for shelf stable sausages. I then thought, what the heck, what do my own old family and neighbors' recipes have (all from 19th century Luxembourg immigrants to the US). The salt measurements are a bit of a guess as they are given in tea cups per 45 or 50lb. I did the math though, and here is what I think it comes to for three farmer sausage recipes: 1.8%, 1.8%, 1.5%, but who knows the exact size of the tea cups. The old timers knew how to make sausage though. The only sketchy bit is the cure. None of the recipes have a qty, they just list "salt petre". I switched my recipes over to cure #1, but many of the old farmers in my area still use salt petre. From my observations, their sausage has a less pronounced cure, basically little to no pink at all when cooked. Not sure if that is due to the quantity or the type of cure, or maybe based on their cure time. No idea how they decided how much salt petre to add, but I do know that they all always did a test cook of a patty before stuffing, then they would all have a bite and argue about it it needed more of. They cold smoked at night starting in about late October with pretty typical cold smoke temps, probably 30-55F. I see southerners go with hot smoke and finish cooking their sausage right in the smoker. I don't actually own a vertical smoker that can heat up. None of the old timers up north did really. They all would boil or pan fry their sausage after cold smoking in a fairly well ventilated wooden smoke house (big enough to handle a few butchered hogs at once). I might try a hot smoke and then bake sometime like the southerners do just to see how my sausage turns out when done that way. That might let me make sausage in the summer. Still though, my meat room relies on cold outside air. I have a small ventilation fan that pulls the room temp down to about 50F, and a wooden cold box cooled by the same fan that will stay below 40F when I using the cold room to make sausage. The cold room was a game changer for my sausage making. I wouldn't want to give that up for summer processing.

Excellent video, thanks for putting it together. I'm 64 and I use 1.75% total salt.

Wow Eric, what an amazing video. I love these type of videos to where you can actually visualize what the differences are. One other question for you, Eric do you have a fat to meat ratio calculator that’s good.

Hello, great video, I like the experiment. I'm 53 and tend to lean toward 2% salt but not over, only because I prefer a good texture. I've done 2.5% salt a few times, it's not terrible you can it eat it of course, but instead of enhancing the flavor it was just too noticeable on most bites. I've dialed it back to get a better taste of the other seasonings. 2% max for good texture but that's just me.

Great video. I am on sodium restrictions and started making my own sausage recently. I currently don't add any salt but I may start adding a bit to help with flavor and texture.

i was a butcher for 3 years when i left the school, we used a sausage mix one for beef the other for pork, both mixes had salt and pepper and other spices, a 20lb sausage batch had 8 ounces of the sausage mix whether it was for beef or Pork link sausage and i live in Scotland

1.7% at age 58. You are the first one to say that you need to add the salt and curing salt to keep it in the right percentage. All other sausage book recipes, and online omit that part. Great work Eric!

I am 50 and I use 1.5% to 1.8% salt pretty much all the time for both fresh and smoked. I just made a nice beef & potato sausage that I am eating right now. Actually I am eating a few breakfast patties from the left over meat mixture my stuffer traps. This one is going to be stellar, too bad I only made 5lbs. I have been making sausage for about 30 years, really well for about the last 15. I sent you a brat recipe that many people say is beyond stellar. I don't know if you ever try the things people send.

This is great information, but I want to add that once you find your preferred salt %, that it will work on that item, but may not work on another, such as dried sausages, salami, pepperoni and cured meats due to the loss of moisture. At that, the other consideration would be at what level of drying do you take your product to. For example, I take pitina to 35 wl, salami to 38 wl and bresaola to 40. Thanks for all your info! I watch ALL your videos!

Very informative. Thank you for doing this. I'm about a 1.8% salt. 67 years young.

I’m 26 years old and I tend to use 2%! I like the saltiness, but sometimes I find that 2% can be a at the maximum of what I want. I’m making a batch of medisterpølse this week and I’m thinking of going to 1.8% to see if that helps me maintain some of the delicate balance that I love in medister. A cool video idea that I’d love to see is the percentage of liquid used in sausage. I noticed that in a lot of medisterpølse recipes there’s roughly 30% water by weight of the meat, but other people in general sausage making tend to stick to 10% or in this video 5%. Medister tends to use some kind of starch and egg as a binder, but I wonder if all sausages could use more liquid or if it interferes with the binding of the proteins. Another thing I’d like to see is this experiment but with gelatine powder mixed into the farce to see how gelatine works in a sausage, and if that enhances the experience or diminishes it.

Super valuable information and lesson. Greatly appreciated to visually see it.

So adding other spices often masks saltiness in my view, particularly if you go hotter, e.g. black pepper, white pepper, chilli. I was surprised that the no salt one cooked without actually falling apart completely. Thus a low salt/sodium sausage seems quite plausible if you are not fussed about the texture.

Killer video! this has become a game changer for me and my sausage-making! I'm at 1.5% Kosher salt and .25% MSG. I'm 57

I’m a trained cook but l’ve never made sausages; can I make your recipes without a kitchen aid mixer ? Many thanks for sharing your knowledge on salting and sausage making, very helpful 🙏😎.

Eric, I usually use your recipe calculator and am pleased with the texture and salt content of the sausages I make so I am guessing that’s set at 1.5%. I am 71 years old

I am 68 yrs old. 1.5% seems the sweet spot for me. Thanks for the video, very informative.

I stick to a total salt content of 1.7%. The basic salt input is 1.5% and I make my seasonings with that additional 0.2%. Excellent video as always!

Thanks for doing this comparison. I like 1.75 and adjust when I use curing salt, I use this for both sausage and bacon.

I’m firmly in the 1.8 camp at 54years that only for fresh sausage, though. Smoked sausages run up to about 2%. I do something different when making sausage though. We separate the lean from the fatty and add 4.5% salt to the lean then when we mix i the fat and fatty meat, we add just enough salt to get back to that 1.8%. I think that makes for maximal protein over all. Not all my team agrees with me on that. We also keep the lean salted for a minimum of 24hrs prior to grinding. What are your thoughts. Thanks for that best sausage channel on the internet.

Fantastic video and great information. I'll have to go check my family's Italian sausage recipe...I'm curious. Thanks for the info.

Eric, I'm 60 and have been using 1.5%. there is a bit of saltiness in my Italian style sausage, but my breakfast sausage tastes fine at that amount. I'm going to try 1.25% for my next batch of Italian or German bratworst.

I really enjoy all your videos. Thank you very much, i learn a lot they are a perfect guide

Hi Eric . i must of seen all most all your sausage/salami videos now. thought i would say hi and thank you, and give you a giggle so got all my stuff for my red wine chrizzo yummy first dry cure sausage all in fridge mixed ready waiting. cases on side soaking in a little salt and water go to work. come back dog ate my cases found your channel watched pitina they smell lovely in my fridge thank you

All this time I was under the impression that sensitivity to salt got Weaker as you got older; this now makes more sense. Most commercial bacons are too salty for me; I settled on Oscar Meyer but soon that was too salty, now I buy their "Lower Sodium" stuff. All the recipes in Ruhlman's "Charcuterie" book were too salty for me, he must've been a youngster when he wrote it!

Learning a lot from you! Thanks for helping use!

I learned a new trick today. Thank you.

As with everything, i think it depends... on the meat and binder. In general in pork sausage i like 1.1 typically to nearest 5 grames, so 1.1-1.3 is golden. I use non fat dry milk which really seems to hide the salt. For beef i usually go 1.3, but sometimes even 1.5 if it's a fattier sausage.

I'm look fword to learning what the salt range is for other meats, the full spectrum of Beef - Elk, Salmon - Trout - Aropima, Chicken- turkey and all other farm raisable meat birds. Note to self I need to re watch the vid where you turned eather biltong or bresaola I think, into pemikin and see how much salt if any you seasoned the Salumi with before drying it and making it into meat powder lol thank you again for another wonderful video as a learning g resource Sir ;~) blessings be for you your family and all of my classmates. Thank you GOD for this amazing community of people to learn from 😊

Great video Eric…I’m at 1.6% …..the funny thing is that I came to the 1.6 percentage with a similar experiment many many years ago….thanks for the post…

Very nice content!!!!! I use 1,25% salt on hamburguer, and 1.75% on saussages..... Your experiment shows me I was right on my experiments.

You have an incredible channel to take a good to decent sausage to great.

Interesting observation on age and salt. I looked at my favorite Italian sausage recipe and it contains 1.2% salt, adjusted for my tastes. I'm mid-sixties.

Thank you for your video! I have a request, can you make pate, liver sausage or rilette with 100% liver that can last a long time? I like to implement more liver in my diet for the nutrients but it doesn't last for me to eat a bit every day. So I'm looking for a recepie that can last a month or so

Great video I've been using batch packs from spice makers but I want to make my own

67 here, you are 100% right, I have less tolerance to salt as years gone /go by, 25 TO Daughter thinks Im too sensitive! One question though is there a minimum % for cold smoked and or cured sausage? I have a recipe from Marianski's book for cold smoked Polish and one is 3% another is 2.5%.

I have been shooting for 1.5%-2% on mine. I have made 5 batches so far and that seems to be the sweet spot for me.

Thank you for this informative demonstration and explanation. I was curious why the salt percentage for salamis and dry-cured meats is so much higher, typically 2.5 - 3.0%, yet they do not taste too salty. What happens to the extra salt during the drying process?

I always liked 1.8 ish% for a cased sausage. I recently did 2.2% for a breakfast patty sausage to combat the fat, crust, and seasoning. I like it sitting there, it's good for a sandwich or gravy. I definitely won't get lost. 38

Thank You !

im 51 and use 1.5% plus curing salt and that makes it perfect for me. hope this helps

62 and have been making sausage for 20 years. I went to unsalted butter in my fridge 5 years ago. I also do 15lbs of cured pork belly to bacon every month. 1.5 % for fresh sausage 2.5 % for bacon or aged sausage.

I'm curious as to how smoking the sausage changes the perceived salt content. I ask because I use a dry rub for chicken that has a number of ingredients that use x-spice salt for the large majority of the ingredients. For example, it uses onion salt, garlic salt etc. If we cook the chicken in the smoker, it's great. If we cook the chicken in a conventional oven, it's damn near inedible. Sugar also seems to have a masking effect as mentioned by another poster below.

Eric, I am 71 and this is the first time that I have seen any one bring this subject up. I was simply going by what the recipe called for but now I will be looking at things differently. I know that sausage and salami are different and can any of this be used when making salami? Great video.

I'm 51. I typically run 1.5% in my sausages, depending on how it's being used and what other spices/ingredients are included. e.g. My Andouille runs at 2%, but its job is to season a pot of gumbo, not really for fresh eating, so the smoke and salt add to the flavor of the stew/gumbo.

I go towards 1.8 to 2 %, (yep, this will be a bit on the salty side for some). I am 56. I slightly adjust the amount of salt used based on the type of sausage I'm making, spices used, type of meats used, and most importantly how much I plan to dry-up the specific sausage/pepperetts during smoking /cooking.

62 years old and 1.75 % salt is my go to

What an awesome educational video! Thank you!

I'm 70 and must be a saltaholic. I tend to use a little more salt than recipes call for in any meat product I am making. I don't mess with the amount of curing salt in the jerkys but kosher salt is usually slightly over.

Recently made your smoked jalapeño sausage. It was1.7% salt added. There was quite a bit of bacon called for too. Tasted wonderful. Must have been close to 2% salt total. Also enjoy a simple pork sausage at 1.5%. Tastes super. No exactly right number for me at age 66.

Great information! Thanks for sharing

Fry those sausages like it's an eighties after school special.

Eric couldn’t agree more, the older I get the less salt I can tolerate. I am 58 years old and I use to put in 1.8% salt ,,now I am down to 1.2to 1.5 percent .Hope this helps. PS. I still use the recommended amounts for dry cured sausage.

Great video. I had no idea salt affected the texture. I use 1.75% and I am 51. I use mortons kosher salt

Another superb informative episode. Can you make an episode comparing acidity please. I made some borewoars using Worcester sauce. It was very tasty but crumbly. If I were to use baking soda to reduce the acidity would the bind be better? Thanks I am 65 years old and tend to use 1.5% salt most of the time.

Hey I’m 43 now and I add 1.67% salt with 0.25% pink #1 for a total of 1.92% for my sweet spot. If timing is a factor then I will add .01% +/- cure accelerator in the form of sodium erythorbate.

In my late 50's have been using 1.75% in all sausage 2.5% in bacon that i double smoke and hang to dry 2% for bacon that gets smoked and sliced and vacumm packed and frozen or kept in the fridge. 3% salt when making ham, been using these ratios since i was taught to make sausage by me dad

My #1 pork breakfast sausage I make has 1.3% salt. I'm 50, been making sausage for around 8 years. I have experimented upto 1.75% which was way too high for my taste. 1% way too low. Thank you and love your channel.

Hi Eric, I can't express how much I appreciate the information. Thank you very much! I do make a type of meat balls and I am finding that 1.25% is good (it was trial and error). But it is interesting how other ingredients can influence the salt percentage. For example - adding an egg to the meat is going to change the balance. With sausages specifically the recipes I have been following call for 1.8 percent for fresh. I am seriously considering experimenting with lower values 1.5 or even a bit less. If you have a chance - it would be very nice to learn how the salt would affect fermented sausages. Because it also acts as a preservative. 50+ for the experiment. I think some cuisines are more exposed to salt because of the staple food (rice). Comparing to others that have staple food of bread (because bread contains salt vs plain rice - does not). While the age is contributor - the staple food type would affect the taste too.

I haven't been making sausage long enough to get my recipe dialed in. Last time I did 2%, this was the first sausage that actually had good texture, but it was also the first one that I used my new stuffer. My wife said it's too salty. I think it's slightly salty, but I was thinking next time time I will go with 1.8%. Maybe I will do a test like this with 1.5 and 1.8% to see what the difference is. I have a feeling I might land somewhere in the middle.

I think your right on point! 50 years old, 1.5% is the sweet spot for me.

I was reading that saucisson sec has up to about 4% salt. I also heard that adding sugar will balance out the saltiness. Opening up pandoras box, it would be fun if you experimented with adding sugar and fermented with different salt contents. I have zero experience with making salame so i have no clue how accurate my statement is.