Using Spice Rubs
Spice rubs are combinations of spices that work together to create a complex, aromatic mix that you can apply to proteins, vegetables, or other everyday foods before cooking to add unexpected dimension. When the spiced food hits heat—of the oven, pan, grill, or hot oil—the spices’ flavors come alive. Best of all, you can make all of these flavor-boosting mixes yourself, but before you grab your spice grinder, here are some hows and whys of homemade rubs.
Grind Whole Spices
You could create a spice rub by mixing together the required ground spices from supermarket jars, but when it’s an option, we prefer to grind whole spices before mixing them into blends. Why? Grinding releases the volatile compounds that give a spice its flavor and aroma, and the longer the ground spice sits around, the more those compounds dissipate. In fact, whole spices have a shelf life about twice that of preground spices. Grinding spices yourself before using them alone or before including them in a blend ensures a fresher result, and freshly ground spices have a hands-down superior aroma and flavor.
Don’t Toast
We’ll tout toasting whole spices to develop flavor when they’re dropped directly into a dish, but we usually don’t toast the spices in our rub and blend recipes before grinding. Why not? Since cooking “toasts” the spice rubs—at least it adds heat that unlocks flavor— we found that pretoasting was often superfluous, and we liked the multipurpose nature of blends made from raw spices.
Add Salt Later
Taste a bit of a store-bought spice blend and it will likely include salt, it might even briefly taste better than homemade versions if you’re tasting it raw because salt enhances the flavor of everything. But we intentionally leave salt out of our rubs. Why? We like to be able to add either table or kosher salt to the recipe in different amounts, depending on the application. Using a measured amount of salt in our rubs would eliminate this flexibility and could result in one dish tasting overseasoned and another one using the same rub underseasoned. So since we leave salt out of our homemade rubs, be sure to adjust the seasoning of our recipes if you substitute a store-bought version so you don’t end up with a supersalty dish.
Put Your Spice Rubs to Work
Once you’ve mastered the basics of spice rubs try making a few of our favorite recipes. Our Spice-Roasted Butternut Squash combines tender cubes of winter squash with warm spices, fresh herbs, and a bright honey-lemon butter. Chicken parts are a blank canvas for a sweet-spicy mixture that packs all the flavor of barbecue sauce into a dry rub in our Spice-Rubbed Chicken recipe. Or start simple with Crunchy Spiced Nuts.
Start with a few of our favorites: Barbecue Rub, Jerk-Style Rub, and Herbes de Provence.
