Rubbed the Right Way

I was looking for a little different wrinkle on the usual rub I use when cooking ribs. I’ll be smoking some spare ribs on the ol’ WSM tomorrow. A few minutes of googling revealed this rub recipe. It looked promising, so I’m going with it, although I’ve made a few modifications based. Here’s what I whipped up:

1. 1 cup brown sugar
2. 2 tablespoons chili powder
3. 2 tablespoons paprika
4. 1 tablespoon garlic powder
5. 1 tablespoon onion powder
6. 2 teaspoons black pepper
7. 1 teaspoon cumin
8. 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

A whole tablespoon of cayenne, which the original recipe calls for, would have had everyone screaming. So I reduced it significantly. I didn’t see the point of all the paprika, so I replaced some of it with chili powder. I never include salt in my rubs- I prefer to salt the meat directly and then apply the rub. In this case, I used a pink salt we recently purchased- it has a funky twang in addition to the normal salt taste. Wow, can’t believe I just wrote that. Finally, I like cumin too much to not include it.

The rub tasted good, we’ll see what the overnight does for it. Most importantly, we’ll see what a little heat and smoke does to it tomorrow.