Rub recipe

[KyNola]

My friend has a commecial BBQ restaurant and gave me some of his rub.  He would not however give me his recipe so I put my wife on a mission to find something very similar on the interrnet and then we would tweak it to match his.  Here is the best effort.  It only has 14 ingredients and makes a bunch.  Thought you might like to take a look.

Jan's Dry Rub
1 cup + 4 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup seasoned salt
1/4 cup garlic salt
1/4 cup + 1 1/2 tsp celery salt
1/4 cup onion salt
2 tsp celery seed
1/2 cup paprika
3 tbsp chili powder
2 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp lemon pepper
2 tsp dry ground sage
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp dry ground thyme
1/2 tsp cayenne

Hope you enjoy.
KyNola

[Gizmo]

Anything with celery salt has my attention.

[Habanero Smoker]

KyNola;

The recipe looks good, but the ingredient seasoned salt is throwing me for a loop. :) That covers a lot of ground. Can you let us know what type of seasoned salt you used in this recipe.

[KyNola]

Habs,
Good question.  It is the regular "buy it off the grocery store shelf" Lawry's Seasoned salt.

KyNola

[Habanero Smoker]

I thought it might be Lawry's. This brings to mind my mother's fried chicken. She wouldn't make it if she didn't have Lawry's Seasoned Salt. Now I know I have to try this rub.

Thanks!

[KyNola]

Habs,
Interestingly enough, my friend prefers to use his rub that this matches when he is smoking chickens.  The day we mixed our version trying to match his, I knew we were close but it wasn't a 100% match.  The next day I tasted our mix and it was an absolute dead match.  Habs, you are so much more knowledgable than me but I honestly didn't know that a spice rub recipe needed a day for the flavors to marry but with this mix, it absolutely made a difference.

Thanks for taking a look at the recipe.  I value your opinion.  One thing my friend said was for his rub is put it on just before it goes in the smoker.  When I used his rub that's what I did as well.  It worked well and doesn't require a thick coating.  Any thoughts?

KyNola

[Habanero Smoker]

The recipe looks like a nice blend. I haven't tried it yet so I can't offer any other opinion. I may make up a batch for next weekend, this weekend is going to be a busy one for me. Thanks for the tip about making rubs a day in advance. Cook's Illustrated also recommends for a rub that contains salt you should either apply it just before cooking or at least 6 hours before you begin to cook.

Have you used this or ribs yet. As I look at it, it may be great on pork. I have to smoke six racks of baby backs (I would have preferred spareribs, but other's requested BB's) for Saturday. I may apply this rub to two racks of ribs to see how they turn out.

[KyNola]

Habs,
I haven't tried it on pork yet but I could see it on ribs and will give it a test run soon.  For folks who like more heat, they may want to use additional cayenne but I really like the overall flavor and the nice little bite you get on the back of your tongue.  I'm a lot more interested in flavor than I am heat as my many travels to Louisiana taught me a long time ago that true cajun food is nicely spiced for flavor with a nice heat but not the "blow the top of your head off" heat that a lot of food preparers claim is cajun.

No disrespect intended to anyone.  I like me some good spicy andouille sausage and smoked tasso.

Habs, if you try it on ribs before I do, let me know how it turned out.  Have a great weekend!

KyNola

[Habanero Smoker]

I going to make 1/4 batch of rub, and will be using it on two of the six slabs of baby backs I'll be smoking this Friday, and will be serving them on Saturday. I'll let you know how they come out and what others think.

Enjoy your weekend also.

[KyNola]

Thanks Habs,
I'm going to give it a shot on ribs this weekend as well.  Let me know what you and your family think and I will be brutally honest what I think as well.  I am so not adverse to saying "OK, this sucks".

I also have 25 pounds of pork bellies to start curing this weekend.

Happy 4th Habs.

KyNola

[FLBentRider]

Let us know how it goes. Seems like a little more salt than most rubs I've used. It would probably not work well if you were going to use any drippings for a sauce.

[KyNola]

FLBR,
Good observation, it does have a lot of salt in it but it also has a lot of sugar and they seem to balance fairly well along with the other ingredients.  Don't get me wrong, you can tell there's salt in it but I don't find it overpowering.  Personally I like salt so it's definitely good with me.  My wife on the other hand is not a big salt person and would be the first to say it is too salty if she felt it was but she really likes the flavor and hasn't mentioned that she found it too salty.

Hope you're feeling better.  Have a good holiday.

KyNola

[vcackerman]

A nice seasoning salt I've been using is Penzey's 4/S Special Smoky Seasoning Salt

Here are its ingredients: Hand-mixed from: Coarse Sea Salt, Smoked Paprika, Sugar, Special Extra Bold Black Pepper, Turmeric, Onion, Garlic, Spice Extractives (including oleoresin of paprika, black pepper, celery, rosemary and thyme).

[Habanero Smoker]

KyNola;

It doesn't have that much salt as compared to most rubs. I have to keep an eye on my sodium also, but my diet is not too restrictive. I found a way to calculate how much table salt there is per tablespoon in a seasoning mix. Your total recipe makes over 3.5 cups and I had calculate the salt amount in your recipe. So depending on what brands you use the total salt would be 10 - 12 tablespoons. The brands that I used would have come to 10.9 tablespoons, if I had made the full batch.

vcackerman;
Welcome to the forum. I buy from Penzey's often. I seen the 4/S Smoky Seasoning Salt. I will order some when I place my next order.

[vcackerman]

That's the great thing with Penzey's - you can buy small quantities for next to nothing and if you don't like em, you spent a dollar and don't feel bad.   They have a California Pepper blend that I like alot too.