Dry-Rub Lamb

Posted by Wayne (Melbourne, Australia) on 6 March 2008 in Food & Cuisine.

Dry rub is everything that's right about food I think. Food doesn't have to be extremely technical or exclusive or have price points that are out of this world. Simple mix of spices, rubbed into the meat with care (you can use cheap cuts if you so choose to) and left to slowly settle for a couple of hours. No fuss..no elaborate recipes or sauces to make....just simple down to earth cooking.

I first got clued into dry rub from two different sources that happened about the same time. The first was from the West Wing...from the episodge 20 hours in America...it was a 2 part serious and I think the 2nd bit..some of the characters had missed the motorcade and had to hitch their way back to D.C. and during the course of which they came to this small back country dinner...they had asked for whatever was good in the place (in a semi-arrogant city dweller way) and the owner came out and explained that the dry rub was good...his exact words were "Sauce is a myth". The second source was an incident that took place shortly after I had watch that episode...I was deployed to a foreign country (which technically shouldn't be stated for national security reasons but is nevertheless one of the most open state secrets) as part of my army training...whilst there...there were these things called Ninja vans (they're basically mobile food vans...they're called ninja vans because no matter where you were training in - be it a remote and desolate valley or a rocky mountain top - if you remained in position for any more than half an hour, you'd eventually see a little ninja van making its way towards you.) I had some money on me and I had the chance to purchase from the Ninja Van vendor a pork slab...which is basically this piece of dry-rubbed pork steak. On that windy and very cold mountain side...it was the best thing I had ever tasted (although probably also one of the most unhygenic given the van equipment's conditions).

Food doesn't have to be fancy (even though its sometimes nice when it is)...Dry rub keeps me humble and reminds me that great food comes from all places not just the ones with spiffy waiters.

The butter that accompanied it was a home-made version of herbed butter.

Recipe will be given on request if you respond with your email or a PM via the aminus3 contact link below (this is only because all of my digitalized recipes have been transferred over to my macbook)
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Due to a request by a visitor for the recipe, I decided that after having type out a response via email to that person..I might as well put up the recipe here as well.

The dry-rub recipe's pretty simple...there is no real recipe per se as it really is something you make to your own taste. However, I'll tell you what I roughly make up my dry rub mix with (this is something you might want to tweak to your own liking so that it becomes 'your' dry-rub recipe as tastes tend to differ =D).

Dry-rub recipe

Note: the important thing to note with the amount is that the spice mix should be enough to sufficiently coat both sides of all the meat you're intending to use. So you can mix up as much spice as you like or as little as you like depending on the amount of meat involved.

Ingredients:
1 part onion powder
1/2 part garlic powder
1 part cajun mix
1 part hot paprika
1/3 part dried chili flakes (optional)
1/4 part chili powder
1/3 part sea salt (you can use regular salt too, if so use 1/4)
1/3 part cracked black pepper
1/4 dried sweet basil flakes

Method:
Mix it up altogether and proceed to evenly coat both sides of the meat(s) you're intending to cook.

Enjoy

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