Commerical vs homemade when competiting.

Commercial

straight from the bottle!

Cheers
Chris

I know we all discuss rub recipes and discuss which is best from time to time. But the question of making and using home made rubs versus buying and using commercial rubs always seems to resurface time after time.

The best rub in the world is the rub you like best. More often than not the rub you like best will not be the one you make yourself. This is because we get locked 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.

This is the reason many people chose other rubs in taste tests. 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.

I will probably have some opposition here, but in the end I think it is best to leave the rubs to the professional suppliers. They have spent year developing their flavor profiles and they are commercially mixed in bulk. 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.

It doesn't mean it's right for everyone to buy commercially rubs. Some of you will, some of you won't. We all use what has worked best for us.

.

As an outsider looking in, this is something that perplexes me whenever it comes up. I just can't wrap my head around competing in BBQ using somebody else's rubs and sauces.

CD

Chicken is mostly commercial.
Ribs is all mine.
Pork is kind of up in the air at the moment. I'm undecided between one I came up with and a commercial one.
Brisket, well, is currently pretty much a disaster. I can't seem to do anything right with brisket.

Russ

IamMadMan said:

The best rub in the world is the rub you like best. More often than not the rub you like best will not be the one you make yourself. This is because we get locked 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.

This is the reason many people chose other rubs in taste tests. They break your barriers of normal taste and expand your flavor horizons.

.

Click to expand...

very much agree.

Alexa RnQ said:

We make our own for two reasons: so we don't taste like everyone else, and so that we never get caught short because we can't get a particular product.

Click to expand...

Same here.

Commercial. Here is what I use. TS, DD, RR, CL, and SG Hint all but one are made by the same company.

What if we use commercial and call it homemade? :-D

For comps, we use a blend of commercial rubs, and I add some things to a commercial sauce. We have been very successful this year with this combination.

When cooking @ home or for catering gigs, I like to experiment a little, adding things to commercial rubs & mixing with a base rub that I make just to keep it consistent and save a little $$.

We use homemade and have had good successes. Lost of trial & error, though, little adjustments after each competition.