Choosing the best beef rib rub depends entirely upon the type of flavor that you would like the beef ribs to have. It's a good idea to use distinctive rubs for beef ribs because they are tricky to prepare. Cooked well, beef ribs are tender and delicious, otherwise they are chewy and lack taste. A beef rib rub can be spicy or sour, mild or hot, savory or sweet. You can either start with the ingredients you have and build up a flavorful rub or go through different types of rubs like country style, Asian, Italian, or Memphis style to select one that suits your taste.
Rubs can be wet or dry and consist of a number of different herbs, spices, and seasonings that impart a strong flavor to the meat. The Kansas City rib rub is a very sweet one that contains brown sugar, paprika, cayenne, and garlic powder as its major ingredients. The Memphis-style rib rub has no sugar, and its heat can be adjusted by varying the amount of cayenne in the recipe. The Carolina barbecue rib rub is a sweet rub that contains a lot of cumin.
A country-style beef rib rub contains black pepper and a great deal of dried parsley. Ingredients like miso and Asian chili paste give a rib rub a very Asian flavor. To impart an Italian flavor to the beef, add ingredients like dried oregano, basil, and dried rosemary. While finding the right rub might seem a little challenging, in reality, it's quite easy to arrive at a great rub recipe just by varying the ingredients a little.
You don't need many ingredients to make a very basic beef rib rub. All it takes is a little chili powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and garlic powder. Varying chili powder levels makes the rub spicier; you can also use paprika. Adding brown sugar or coarsely ground yellow mustard seeds makes the dish sweeter or hotter, respectively. You can even prepare a slightly wet beef rib rub with a Korean twist by adding ingredients like soy sauce, rice vinegar, and grated ginger.
In just 10 minutes, you can prepare a dry beef rib rub, and once it's done, it can be stored in an airtight container for a long time. To prepare the beef, rub the dry rub into the ribs the night before and cook and smoke it for a couple of hours the next day. Cooking on a low flame for a long time ensures that the meat will be tender as well as flavorful.
