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This all purpose coffee rub is our all-time favourite dry rub that we use on everything. It’s earthy, flavourful and great to use on anything you want to quickly cook up on the grill. Quick to make – you can double, triple or quadruple the recipe so that you only need to make it once and have plenty leftover.

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It’s Spring! Huzzah! Let’s all do a happy dance!
The best part of Spring time for me is when our grill is no longer iced shut and I can finally open them up again for grilling some good eats!

What’s the first thing we grill? RIBS! 😀 What kind of rub did we use? A coffee one!

What Does ‘Coffee Rub’ Taste Like?

Not like coffee, oddly. It has a dark earthy flavour combined with a nice balance of garlic and onion notes with a background flavour of cumin. The rub is low in sugar and salt so that you don’t get an overly salty or overly sweet result, which won’t overpower your BBQ sauces. We added a bit of cayenne for a spicy kick but that is completely optional and can be omitted.

INGREDIENTS

All ingredients can be found at your local grocery store.

You may wonder, “Coffee grounds? Really? Isn’t that bitter?”

I can assure you it’s not! 🙂 That was also my first reaction as well as I was doing some testing as black coffee is usually very strong and very bitter but the spices meld very well with the coffee and instead it provides a subtle dark earthy flavour to the rub.

Tip #1 : Do not use ‘used’ coffee grounds. There’s no flavour in it.

Optional : Cayenne for a bit of a spicy kick is also quite nice.

HOW FINE DO YOU GROUND UP THE COFFEE?

This one is a personal preference but I’ll list off some of our findings.

FINE GROUND – We found that grinding it up too finely, made it stick to the meat *too* much and it doesn’t give the other spices a chance to latch on to the meat since it falls right off because the fine coffee kind of just takes over.

MEDIUM GROUND – Just right. Has enough surface area to have a subtle coffee, earthy flavour. It also matches the consistency of the other spices. This is our preference.

COARSE GROUND – Not enough surface area for flavour and doesn’t stick to the meat as well since it sticks on last because of the size. Depending on how coarse you grind it up you may even start noticing that you are actually chewing on the grounds and having them stuck to your teeth.

You can use any type of coffee for this rub (light, medium or dark roast). The darker the roast the stronger the flavour.

…but maybe refrain from using flavoured coffee 😛 unless “Creme Brulee Toffee” chicken is totally your thing.

Tip #2 : To make this an even simpler and quicker rub, we sometimes just buy pre-ground coffee for this.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Grind up the coffee (or use pre-ground coffee) and mix the ingredients together! This is a very versatile rub. You can use this on ribs, chicken, beef, pork, lamb – pretty much anything! If you make a large batch, keep it in a well sealed container and store in a cool dry spot away from the sun. Sunlight damages spices and takes away the flavour with time.

What kind of interesting things do you put in your rubs? We’d love to hear all about it! Tag us with #pupswithchopsticks to tell! 😀

Happy Spring! Time to hit the grills!