Colorozo
Also known as Nitrite salt, Colour salt, Colouring salt, Nitrited curing salt, Nitritpokelsalz
The European curing salt: ordinary salt lightly charged with about 0.6 per cent sodium nitrite, used pure as the whole salt of a recipe rather than added on top of it.
Colorozo, sold plainly as nitrite salt or colour salt, is how most of Europe cures. It is common salt with roughly 0.6 per cent sodium nitrite blended in, usually with an anti-caking agent, and its name comes from the job it is best known for, holding the fresh pink colour that ordinary salt would let fade to a drab grey. It is the everyday curing salt of the European butcher and home curesmith, and the reason is largely regulatory: the 6.25 per cent Prague Powder concentrates that dominate North America are not sold in the European trade.
Its defining feature is how it is used, and this is the whole point of the entry. Because the nitrite is carried at a low strength, Colorozo is used as the salt, not in addition to it. Where an American curesmith weighs a tiny 0.25 per cent of Cure #1 and then adds the rest of the salt separately, a European curesmith simply salts the meat with Colorozo and the correct nitrite comes with it. In real terms: at about 2.5 per cent of the meat weight, 25 grams of Colorozo per kilogram, the 0.6 per cent nitrite delivers roughly 150 milligrams of nitrite per kilogram, a normal salting level and a normal curing dose in one weighing.
That convenience carries the sharpest of cautions. The 0.25 per cent rate of Cure #1 and the 2.5 per cent rate of Colorozo are not interchangeable: use Colorozo at Cure #1's rate and the meat is badly under-cured, use Cure #1 at Colorozo's rate and you have put ten times the safe nitrite into the meat. The rate belongs to the product, and the two must never be crossed. Unlike the pink-dyed Prague Powders, nitrited salts are often sold undyed, looking exactly like table salt, which makes clear labelling and separate storage all the more important.
Like Cure #1, Colorozo carries nitrite alone and no nitrate, so its nitrite is spent within weeks. It is right for cooked and shorter-cured products, but for long air-dried work of a month or more it lacks the slow nitrate reservoir; there a curesmith reaches instead for Salvianda, the nitrate-bearing European salt, or adds saltpetre. Always work the actual dose to the current legal ceiling for the product and country, which in the EU was lowered under Regulation (EU) 2023/2108 from October 2025.