I Love the Color of This Rub

First time I've ever used this rub. I have to be careful when buying commercial rubs, as nasties like MSG and gluten will give my wife migraines. I found this rub today when I picked up 3 racks of baby backs, and the ingredients are all natural. The color is awesome. I should say, the color before they went in the cooker. Of course, it darkened a bit as they cooked. However, this rub doesn't have as much sugar as the one I normally use, and that sugar can turn pretty black if I don't keep an eye on them.

Since this isn't a real sweet rub, the ribs weren't as sweet as I'm accustomed to, which was fine. It was a nice change of pace. The rub is redder than it looks in the photo. Must be the paprika.

It was more savory (or salty) than sweet. Here's the ingredient list, in the order shown on the package:

Salt, paprika, sugar, spices including chili pepper, brown sugar, dehydrated garlic, silicon dioxide (to prevent caking), and natural smoke flavor

My typical go to rub for pork and poultry is Bone Suckin' Sauce. I buy it at Lowe's. It's far sweeter than the Jack Daniel's rub. I used a different sauce than I usually get as well. I like Stubbs Sticky Sweet on ribs, but I bought a bottle of Stubbs Smokey Brown Sugar, just for something different. I liked it, and I ate more ribs than I usually do, but I think I like the Sticky Sweet better. I may have eaten more than usual because I got a late start and that caused us to eat kind of late. We like ribs to be pretty tender, so I usually cook them for 6 hours. I ran these at 240 for six hours, using the 3 2 1 method. 3 hours with just rub and smoke, 2 hours in foil with some honey, butter, brown sugar, and apple juice, then another hour unwrapped with more rub added. That's the method that produces ribs that my wife really likes. You know, happy wife happy life, so I try to make what she likes.

The Bone Suckin' Sauce pork rub has the following ingredients, in this order:

Brown sugar, salt, spices (including chili pepper), sugar, paprika, dehydrated onion, garlic, and bell pepper, mustard seed, celery seed, citric acid & natural flavor. No MSG!

That's exactly how it's printed on the label. It's an excellent rub if you prefer sweeter Q. I get it at Lowe's, and it would have been pretty inconvenient for me to have to run there to get some (I'm out of it right now), particularly given the late start I was up against. At some point, I need to learn a hot and fast recipe for ribs and butts. I don't even cook butts anymore, because it's such a long process.

HouseDoc said:

Watch some early day video of Malcolm Reed. He discloses the mix for his bbq rub. I tweaked it a bit and now it's all I use. Economical and delicious.

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Interesting that Malcom would do that. I follow his recipes almost exclusively, but I don't remember seeing that video. If it's an older one, it may have been posted before I got into cooking Q. I spoke with him via Facebook once, back when I had an account. He's a real decent dude.