10% water in your mix for pepperoni is a good rule of thumb, and you want to stuff immediately after mixing before the meat starts to "set". When measured properly the nitrites in your sausage should only be about 150 ppm (parts per million), and I believe commercial applications are required to be below 200 ppm. To put that in perspective, that is only about 2/3 cup sodium nitrite per 1000 kg of pepperoni mix! Prague powder #1 is actually a 15:1 mix of regular table salt with sodium nitrite to make it easier to measure the correct dosage. You only need to use 2.5-3.0g of Prague #1 cure per 1 kilogram of meat mix to hit 150 - 200 ppm.