For those that cook hot and fast...

Use raw sugar. Or...cook low and slow...

Use Turbinado sugar, and keep your temps below 300 and you'll be fine.

I. Always wrap when I’m cooking at a hotter temp. Helps keep the sugar (and exterior in general) from burning.

On chicken I moved away from rubs with a lot of sugar in general. I can’t get the skin I want without the rub getting too dark if there is sugar in it.

When I cook hot and fast I make sure I'm cooking in a moist environment. I also make sure to inject; not necessarily for more flavor, but so there will be more juices pushing to the surface of the meat during the cook. As the meat cooks the muscle fibers contract, and that forces the moisture (and injection juices) to start pushing out to the surface of the meat. This keeps the surface at or below 212° so that will keep your rub / bark from burning. I also wrap after about 2-3 hours when cooking that hot to help keep the meat under a moist environment.

As others have stated Turbinado sugar won't burn as easily and when I make my own rubs that's what I use for the sugar component.

I use SPOG for pretty much everything- Butts and brisket at 300. Chicken at 350-375.

The only rub I use that has sugar in it is a knockoff of the Killer Hogs "The Rub"- it has some brown sugar and turbinado in it. It could probably take temps 315-320 but the only thing I use is on is a base layer on ribs- and those are smoked at 250-275. The only time they see north of 300 is if I get sloppy with my "lid off" time on my drum.

edit - nevermind, I thought you meant hot as in grilling temps.

Aggie12 said:

Thanks, so it sounds like most of y’all are either avoiding sugar in the rub or keeping the heat down below around 300.

Was mostly asking to get a sense of whether any of y’all had cooked HNF with sugar and what temps you had been able to cook without issues when using sugar.

Click to expand...

Using a commercial rub, that contains sugar, I've never burned it unless I had a grease fire (may or may not have happened:decision: ) cooking around 300*.

That includes cooking ribs on a Jambo, and I cook my ribs on the exhaust end which is one of the two warmer areas.

If you are mixing your own seasoning I would suggest using turbinado. If it's too coarse for your preference, run it through a coffee grinder.

Hook Em