Often, in order to make a good dish, you need to add flavours to it. Many types of meat and some vegetables are frequently seasoned to enhance both their taste and to add a necessary flavour to reach the expected end results of a specific cuisine. Even if it’s just a simple dash of salt and pepper on top of the brisket, the seasonings are part of what truly makes a lunch or dinner memorable.
This, of course, extends to barbecuing. To get a delicious steak or ribs made on your barbecue, you need to use some seasonings to make it perfect. What kind of spices you use can be different for each type of meat you put on the grill, too. This is why barbecue rubs and sauces have been used for such a long time. Each has its own pros and cons, but they also can help make your dinner even more perfect.
To learn more about rubs, sauces and when’s the best time to use them when you’re about to fire up your barbecue, read this article. If you’re interested in getting some for yourself, stores like Dickson Barbecue Centre have everything you need.
Table of Contents
What are Barbecue Rubs?
In the most basic sense of the term, a barbecue rub is a mixture of spices, herbs, and other seasonings that are applied to raw meat to add flavour to it. While the meat is left to rest and the rub sinks in, the mixture forms a layer on top. Then, when the meat is cooked, the rubs can further soak in and emphasize its taste. There are, however, two different types of rubs, each with its own benefits. The type of cut and the amount of fat the meat has can determine whether it needs any seasoning and, if it does, what type is needed.
Dry Rubs
Dry rubs are the most common types of rubs you can find. Many of the seasonings you can get in stores specifically for barbecuing are bottles of dry rubs. More often than not, dry rubs are made out of a combination of powdered seasonings like paprika, sugar, and cayenne. As the name suggests, these ingredients are frequently dry and can be stored for a long time. Dry rubs are also great for moist meats since they form a crispy layer once the meat’s been cooked.
Wet Rubs
Much like a dry rub, wet rubs are made out of a mixture of spices and seasonings, though there is one key difference. While they typically have many of the same ingredients, a wet rub has an additional liquid ingredient. The ingredient is usually a type of oil or vinegar, but – if you make your own – can also be mustard or even alcohol.
Ultimately, wet rubs can be mistaken for marinades, due to the liquid ingredient being one of the more major components. While marinades can be a type of wet rub, there are some that don’t count as a marinade. Usually, a wet rub only needs enough liquid to form a paste before you can apply it. This is what makes them good for dryer pieces of meat and even some vegetables.
What are Barbecue Sauces?
Barbecue sauce is a mixture of mostly liquid ingredients that are mixed together to slowly break down the meats’ proteins to add flavour. While originally simply a mixture of vinegar, salt, and pepper, modern barbecue sauces now use other ingredients to add more tastes, like ketchup, and chili powder. Due to its other ingredients, the acidic content in the barbecue sauce – still usually vinegar – is only enough to start tenderizing the meat while still making the barbecue sauce sweeter.
How to Use a Rub
Remove Extra Moisture
Whether you’re using a dry or a wet rub, the process of applying is pretty much the same for both. While dry rubs work well for moist meats, you want to make sure that it’s not overly wet. Before you start applying the rubs, pat away any moisture that’s on top with a paper towel. Be sure that you don’t completely dry it or use too much force since that will ruin the meat and leave it too dry.
Let the Rub Soak in
If your rub is dry, you want to make sure that you apply it, at minimum, an hour before you start barbecuing it. This guarantees that the flavour of the rub has enough time to actually marinate the meat. You can also apply it right before grilling, but that more than likely gives the meat a weaker flavour.
For wet rubs, the longer the amount of time you let the rub sit, the better the end taste will be. If you have the time to spare, you can apply it to the meat up to several hours before you start the barbecue. While it’s perfect to leave the meat to sit for hours when hosting bigger parties and occasions, you can also just apply the wet rub an hour before grilling up dinner for just your family. The end result is just like a dry rub’s crust, too!
How to Use a Sauce
Ideally, due to the often higher sugar content of a barbecue sauce, the best time to use it is a few minutes before you finish grilling the meat. This gives the sauce enough time to quickly tenderize the meat and add its flavour before the sauce thickens as it cooks. Of course, you can also use the sauce as a marinade if you don’t mind small amounts of it dripping off while the meat cooks.
Takeaway
Barbecue sauces and rubs both have their own positives and negatives when used for barbecuing. What makes them particularly great on top of adding flavour to whatever you put it on is that you can use both if you prefer to do that. Thanks to the many developments in cooking and its technology, both rubs and sauces have a wide range of tastes that you can use, allowing you to use however much you want and whenever you want to create a dish that is delicious to you.
