Pork Rub

This homemade pork rub is half Memphis and half Texas. I guess this was a natural mix after meeting a Texas girl in Memphis and marrying her. It goes great on baby back ribs or a Boston butt. When I first started making this rub I experimented with a huge combo of various spices. While the result was always good I figured out most of what I was tossing in didn’t really contribute anything.

I’ve cut ingredients here and there over the years for various reasons. The biggest omission I’ve made to my homemade pork rub though has been brown sugar. When I first started making this rub for Boston butts it contained a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar. I can’t claim any real epiphany for the change. I forgot it one day and realized after I’d put the butt on. When we ate it we didn’t miss it at all.

Ditching the brown sugar gave my pork rub two unexpected benefits. Without the brown sugar, it became possible to make a large batch of rub to put in a shaker without large clumps forming. Better yet, I could now use the same rub for ribs and for butts.

This pork rub recipe can thoroughly rub up to a ten-pound Boston butt or several racks of ribs. For butts, I generally rub them the night before and leave them in the fridge uncovered overnight. For ribs, largely the same except I first rub the ribs with a light coating of yellow mustard and shake on the pork rub. I confess that I frequently don’t plan ahead enough for an overnight rest, but it does help create a great bark if you can manage. Give this rub a shot with my Pulled Pork on the Big Green Egg. I also use this pork rub for pork belly burnt ends and have sprinkled it on chicken while it's on the grill.

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