Morton Tender Quick contains salt, sugar and the sodium nitrate (Prague, Instacure etc). You can order it on line through many suppliers that I have posted here in the past. Butcher Packer, and Allied Kenco are two sources. Buying the salt petre from a pharmacy would be fine too, but its quite powerful, and you must use very little. Its also used as a component in gun powder! Usually the meat handling stuff is blended with salt and red coloring to differentiate it from regular salt. You need to pump it into the meat with a big hypo syringe, about 20% of the weight. Then the meat also gets soaked in the brine for at least 24 hours. The amount used for a 10 pound weight or meat is only about a teaspoon or two mixed with a gallon of water and salt. Here is another site that also sells it along with many spice blends. The major difference in corned beef and pastrami is corned beef is not usually coated with ground spices, and is boiled/simmered in a spiced water, or slow cooked in a crock pot. The pastrami is drained of curing brine, then liberally coated with spices of mustard seed, celery seed, ground red sweet pepper, granulated onion, garlic, pepper, and coriander. I also grind up a few bay leaves, as well as a little rosemary to add to the spice coating. The meat is cured in a very slow oven under 170 dgerees for about an hour, then 190, for an hour, then 210 for another hour, then 240-250 for the balance of the time, or until the internal temp reaches 160 degrees. Allow it to cool covered, then chill overnight, and slice thin to serve either cold, or place some slices in a small covered pan with a half cup of water and steam it for about 2 minutes, drain, and serve.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sausage Maker

The local supermarket had a whole pork loin on sale for just $1.69 a pound. I couldn't resist getting another one to make more Canadian bacon. This time, I used my usual hickory smoke flavor which I usually get from the Sausage Maker. I found that the Colgen type is way too weak for me, as I used half a pint bottle the last time with very little smokey flavor after curing the pork. This time, I have a VERY smoky Canadian bacon, which is quite strong flavored. Its OK though as its quite a flavor boost to a breakfast with an egg and cheese on an english muffin. The hickory smoke flavor from the Sausage Maker has an oily residue too, which is probably why its as strong as it is. Even the meat had a slight amber tinge because the smokey flavored brine is injected into meat as well as brined under vacuum for 24 hours.

if you have time, order it from

http://www.mortonsalt.com/consumer/products/meatcuring/index.htm

Unless your doing a LOT of meat curing, the source direct from Morton requires you to buy quite a lot at one time, and the cost is about $10+ not including shipping. The source below has a 32 ounce bag for around $5.00

Here is a link that might be useful: Ingredients store