I stumbled across Oakridge Rubs by accident when I had problems with another distributor trying to ship some rubs to my son who was deployed overseas. The deployed soldiers wanted some rubs for for a holiday cook they had planned a few weeks in advance.
Since then I have tried all of the Oakridge rubs and I am more than pleased with such outstanding products low in salt and low in sugar, but very large on flavors.
I use Competition Beef and Pork rub, it is great.... The Dominator Sweet Rib rub is also good, but it has a very slight hint of cinnamon, nothing wrong with that, but it may take you buy surprise if you never used a rub with cinnamon in it.
While making homemade rubs can be a fun experiment and the outcome can be good. I have tried many recipes from here and even varied them from time to time, but have never created anything exceptionally outstanding.
In blind taste tests, more often than not, the rub you like best will not be the one you make yourself. This is because lock ourselves into a closed mind of what spices we should put into the rub we make. Personal changes in taste are difficult to make and we tend to lock in on a specific set of ingredients and exclude others that don't appeal to our personal tastes. They break your barriers of normal taste and expand your flavor horizons. Remember that a rub is not only a mixture of spices and herbs, it is a mixture of flavors. A good rub will have a balanced flavor that adds layers of flavor of the meat, without overpowering it. While a rub will add flavor, it is also a flavor enhancer that brings out and compliments the overall flavor of the meat with subtle additions of salty, sweet, savory, and spicy flavors in perfect balance to our taste buds.
The bottom line is that making multi-layers of flavors in rubs at home is not an easy task. In the end I think it is best to leave the rubs to the professional suppliers. They are commercially mixed in bulk at extreme discounts. They have professional mixing, measuring, and packaging equipment. In the end they have the quality control labs to provide you with a consistent product that will not change from cook to cook. It will save you a lot of work, effort, and yes even money in the interim, and there are so many choices out there.
End Note:
(After 3 years and I am still waiting for that other distributor to contact me with the actual shipping costs that were estimated at $40.00+. I called everyday for over a week and was simply told, "we are working on it". After a week Mike stepped up to the plate out of nowhere and offered to deliver them on time. Mike from Oakridge shipped the rubs for a simple $4.95, needless to say, I'll never spend another cent of my money with the other distributor. The happy ending of the story is that a group of 40 deployed soldiers had a great tasting holiday meal.)
