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If you’re known as the grilling enthusiast among your friends and family, you have probably thrown quite a few BBQ parties in your backyard that everyone loved. There are many tricks for grilling meat just right and making it mouth-watering. Some of them include cutting notches in your meat, oiling your grill with homemade onion oil or using the famous “two-zone fire” grilling method. However, nothing gives a good piece of steak or rib that delicious, juicy taste like BBQ rubs and spices do.
What Are BBQ Rubs?
A BBQ rub is a tailored formula of differently combined herbs, spices, seasonings and other flavouring ingredients you add to the meat before barbecuing to enhance its flavour. Aside from making the meat so delicious, meat rubs are also used to give that mouth-watering “bark” to your dish – that heavy, smoke-infused crust that gives the meat an authentic, smoky flavour. These great barbequing formulas combine salt and sugar with ingredients such as black pepper, chilly paprika or chipotle powders with aromatics such as garlic, onion or mustard powders, oregano, cumin, etc.
Types of BBQ Meat Rubs
You can use either dry or wet BBQ rubs, it is up to your preferences. However, it’s important to know how they differ from each other.
Dry Rubs
A dry BBQ rub seasoning will include only dry ingredients and aromatics. The most common base for these dry rubs is paprika, accompanied by up to 5 different herbs and spices to give the meat a different taste. But know that you should only use them if you want to enhance the natural meat flavour and spice it just a little bit or you want to get a solid crust without adding much moisture to it.
Wet Rubs
Wet rubs are BBQ sauces made of the same seasonings we talked about before, but mixed with a liquid base such as olive oil, vinegar, beer or different pepper and brown sugar pastes instead of paprika spices. But unlike dry rubs, wet rubs are used to get juicy meat featuring different customized flavours. They are ideal for slow cooking and flavouring the meat all the way through. They evaporate when exposed to heat, while the flavour compounds still remain in the meat.
Make sure you choose only bold barbecue rubs, regardless of whether they’re wet or dry. Their flavours won’t penetrate your meat deeper than the outer two millimetres, so choosing the ones that “act shy” around your meat would totally be in vain.
Some Tasty Flavour Suggestions
Now that you’ve learned what a simple mixture can do for meat, instead of wasting time smoking meat and trying different barbecuing methods, find your perfect BBQ rub seasoning for the ultimate taste. We selected a couple of tasty BBQ rubs and sauces you must try at your next barbeque party.
So, starting from the branded Jack Daniels rubs for beef, chicken and steak, this product offers a mixture of perfectly blended spices, seasonings that enhance meat’s taste and the signature Jack Daniels whiskey flavour.
Another popular rub for BBQ is the Wyld Smoke rub, which is made of paprika, coffee, oregano, onion, garlic and chilli powder. It offers the perfect blend of heat, salty and smoky spices for a unique depth of flavour. This rub is perfect for adding that spicy South American taste to your dish. Pair it with a good bottle of red wine, and you got the perfect al-fresco dinner for your guests.
Finally, our last suggestion is the extraordinary honey-chilli seasoning. This rub is inspired by authentic Chinese cuisine and goes great with both pork and chicken thighs and wings. The mixture of spicy ingredients such as red pepper, smoked paprika, chilli, onion and garlic powder and the sweet honey powders, cinnamon and anise makes for the perfect sweet-and-spicy rub for the ones willing to experiment and try mixing different flavours.
How to Use BBQ Rubs?
Depending on the type of rub you choose, there are two ways to use it with meat. When it comes to dry rubs, first you need to drain the moisture out of your meat, so it’s always best to pat it. If the meat still has liquid on the outside, the rub will clump together, leading to uneven spread and weaker flavour. So, once the meat is dry enough, sprinkle the rub all over it until it’s coated and press it into the meat to make it crispier.
Wet rubs should be smeared onto the meat until you cover the entire surface. After you do that, “massage” it gently with your hands to smooth the texture. Wet rubs will moisturize the meat and give it a juicy taste. It’s always best to add them to the meat at least 30 minutes before you cook the meat so it absorbs all those juices.
How to Store BBQ Rubs?
Once you’re done with the delicious BBQ, store your rubs until you need to use them again. When it comes to dry rubs, it’s best to keep them in your fridge. Keep in mind that after some time, their taste will fade out. So make sure you store them in convenient storage containers or jars with covers that make a seal, so you keep the flavours fresh for a longer period. When stored like this, dry rubs should last up to 6 months.
When it comes to wet rubs, they usually come in jars and are stored the same way as dry rubs. You just have to make sure that the cover is tightly closed. The only difference is that wet rubs last much less than dry ones, so it’s best to use them only for a couple of weeks after opening them.
