Dry Rub: Pork Butt and Chicken

June 17, 2023: This post contains an updated recipe for my butt rub. The new recipe yields about four cups of rub, enough for a few pork shoulders. It has a slightly different and better flavor than my original recipe.

I have created a lot of dry rubs in my life and professional career. The impetus to use dry rubs came early on when I frequented a barbecue joint where the smoked chicken was of another planet. I memorized the flavors of the rub on that sinful chicken (I have that kind of flavor-centric mind in that I am blessed to be able to taste a dish and then reproduce it) and carried them with me for many years until I had the ability to smoke first chicken and then turkey for myself.

From that base rub, I have branched out many ways. We made all our own spice mixes at the restaurant. One that stands out was our all-purpose pork and chicken rub, which we always called Butt Rub. Now I see somebody has copyrighted that term. Another is our Cajun rub which we called Magic Dust. Again, I see somebody copyrighted that term. I could have beat them to it!

We made a lot of other spice mixes including garam masala and ras el hanout. And at one point, I had a consulting gig with a food manufacturer to create pastrami and other rubs. That was a lot of fun playing with spices. But in this post, let's talk basics of roasting rubbed chicken and then look at a rub for it.

Dry-Rubbed Chicken, Ready for the Oven

As you see in the photo above, the basic idea for a dry rub is to coat the meat in a spice mix before roasting, grilling, or smoking it. At the restaurant, we used to pour massive amounts of rub over the meat and coat each piece individually. But for small home quantities, I place the meat in a large seal-top bag, add a decent amount of the spice mix to the bag, seal it, and shake it around until all the surfaces of the meat are covered.

Use as much or as little spice as you like. Some people think that a solid coating like this covers up the meat inside. I agree to a point, but our chicken and pork today are so bland that I think the spice helps. Consider also that the spice is only on the outside and that the meat inside the crust is unspiced. But, if I had a great piece of Mangalitsa, Berkshire, or other heirloom-breed pork, I surely would not spice it heavily, if at all. Nor a great fowl.

As for roasting, during my years at the restaurant, I taught all my cooks the art of roasting meat on slabs of onion. I don't remember where I picked up the technique, but the onions keep the meat off the bottom of the pan, give the dish enough moisture to get started steaming away, and then they baste and soften in the delicious fat in the bottom of the pan for hours. The result is something that is so sexy good that we almost never wanted to serve the onions to customers. Almost. The onions most often ended up flavoring and thickening a stock that would become a sauce for the meat. The onions you see above ended up flavoring an incredible white bean soup.

Once the chicken is rubbed and resting on its slabs of onions, I generally cover the pan with aluminum foil and put it in a slow oven to roast. You want to cook the chicken to the point where it is fork tender, but will still hold its shape. This batch took about two hours at 350F. A batch the week before only took 90 minutes. Chicken thighs, because of their fat content, can be roasted uncovered if you prefer to crisp the skin to ultimate goodness. The chicken you see below, I roasted uncovered. Yes, the skin was sinful.

Roasted Chicken, Rice, and Cole Slaw

The pan of chicken thighs (because dark meat rules) gave us a wonderful dinner served with cole slaw and rice, over which we put a little of the pan drippings. That was one fine southern-inspired meal.

The next day, the leftover chicken became chicken tacos, after I picked all the meat off the bones. Whenever I roast meat, I always plan on having leftovers to repurpose in the following days. We sprinkled some of the leftover spice rub onto our tacos and topped them with leftover cole slaw, the same ingredients repurposed in an entirely different form.

I also saved all the bones and skin from picking the taco meat and simmered that with all the roasted onions and defatted juices from roasting the chicken to make a spicy chicken stock. After I removed the bones and skin, the spiced chicken stock and roasted onions made a fabulous soup, when simmered with a couple of cans of white beans, then smoothed out with the immersion blender. That's another tip for you: if you are throwing out bones and so forth without making stock, you are missing out on great flavor.

Butt Rub for Barbecue-Style Chicken or Pork Shoulder

Until recently, I did not have a recipe per se for my pork and chicken rub. When we were making rubs for the restaurant, I would have scalable recipes for the cooks to follow, such as 3 parts salt, 2 parts cayenne, and 1 part ground thyme. Now at home, I just wing the mix, so there is some variation between batches, which is perfectly OK for me and my home cooking.

The key to a good chicken or pork rub is to find a balance between spice, salt, and sweet, with enough complexity to be interesting. Spice is provided by paprika, smoked paprika, cayenne, black pepper, and mustard. Sweet comes from sugar, allspice, nutmeg, coriander, and fennel. Complexity comes from basil, oregano, and garlic. Although many recipes call for brown sugar, I prefer granulated white sugar because it is less moist and the rub runs freely rather than clumping and becoming pasty.

I don't use very many pre-ground spices which is why the recipe below calls for whole spices. Ground spices go off in flavor much faster than whole spices. I highly recommend the Waring Professional Spice Grinder, if you grind a lot of spices. If you don't, you will never recoup the $300 price tag. There are lots of inexpensive grinders that will work although they won't be able to grind the whole batch of spices below in 15 seconds!

The following will yield about four cups of the rub.

Pre-ground spices:

1 cup sweet paprika
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup granulated garlic
3/8 cup Morton's Kosher salt

1/4 cup smoked paprika

1/8 cup coarsely ground black pepper

2 tablespoons ground cayenne pepper

Spices to be ground: 

1/4 cup whole allspice berries

1 whole nutmeg

1/8 cup brown or yellow mustard seeds

1/8 cup cumin seeds

1/8 cup coriander seeds

1/8 cup fennel seeds, ground

1/8 cup dried basil

1/8 cup dried oregano

Place all of the pre-ground spices in a bowl large enough to hold a quart of spice rub. Then grind all of the whole spices (and the basil and oregano leaves) in a spice grinder until smooth and add to the bowl. Mix well.

After mixing, I sample a bit of the mix and adjust it to my liking. Needs more salt, add it. Not spicy enough for you? Add more cayenne. And so forth. Just be careful with the sugar: if you are grilling over direct flame, the sugar quickly goes to caramel and then burns. Some char is delicious; a lot can ruin a perfectly good meal.

Take this as a base recipe and see what you can do.