Pork Spice Rub

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As you all know, I love to make my own seasoning blends, spice rubs and what not. This particular spice rub is meant for pork – like a pork shoulder or butt for pulled pork, pork ribs, or even pork chops. With the addition of brown sugar you get that lovely sweet but spicy flavor you want from a pork dish. While this is mostly meant for grilled or smoked meats, you can certainly use this Pork Spice Rub in you oven as well.

When it comes to making my own spice blends, seasonings and rubs, I prefer to utilize my grocery’s bulk bins. This allows me to get exactly how much of each ingredients that I need and usually at a great price. It also turns out that using the bulk bins is a very earth conscience move as well. Most stores will even let you bring in your own containers to measure out what you need. You just need to go to customer service and ask them to weight and mark your containers, so they will only charge you for the product.

Since this is a sugar based rub, you do need to use caution when storing it. Sugar tends to “clump” so you want to do something to limit moisture. You can achieve this with a combination of airtight containers and a moisture wicking stone. These “stones” are typically made of terracotta, and work to absorb the moisture to keep seasoning blends from producing the clumps that you just don’t want.

This is the type of rub that needs to be used liberally. You need to make sure you coat all sides of the protein. It is also best if you can let the meat sit with the rub on it for a few hours (up to overnight) so that it can really penetrate the meat. Another key to success with this rub is to remember that it has sugar in it. This means putting it directly over flame will scorch it. So be sure to either wrap the meat in foil or cook it low and slow in a smoker.

As I’ve mentioned, this is great for pork shoulder, pork butt, pork ribs or even just pork chops. But it is also a really great place to start for a homemade BBQ sauce – also great on some pulled pork sliders. If you add half of a cup of this spice rub to two cups of ketchup, a quarter cup of vinegar, quarter cup of yellow mustard, quarter cup of bourbon or beer all in a small sauce pan over medium low heat, you can let it simmer for at least 30 minutes (two hours is better).

Now Let’s Get Cookin’!

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