there's also other salts in it besides sodium chloride. for some reason my brain tells me that pink salt is saltpeter, but that's potassium nitrate, and wikipedia says pink salt is sodium nitrate.
Close. When I was a kid we used to make gunpowder (charcoal, sulfur, potassium nitrate) with saltpeter that we got from the drug store. The story to tell was "my mom is making ham." But that was whitish.
Hmmm. I do have some pink salt that I used to cure ham last fall. OK, just checked and the package says sodium nitrate.
