Italian Herb Rub

This is a simple rub you can use on fish, pork or poultry. I love this on chicken. It’s easy to make, and adds great flavour to your meat. Drizzle some oil over your meat, rub it in really well, then coat the meat with this rub, let the flavour develop for a couple of hours before cooking. It’s delightful!

This is one of those rubs that makes your whole house smell amazing when you make it. The aroma is nothing short of delightful. This is one of my favourites for chicken, but I also use it on pork and fish. You can add some lemon zest to it to give it that citrus flavour as well. Also really wonderful with orange zest for chicken.

I think that’s what I love so much about rubs. You can tailor them to your own tastes. If you don’t like parsley leave it out. If you like more garlic in your food toss some in. It’s so easy to customize rubs to your own taste buds.

I like to keep some basic rubs on hand all the time, then when I want to add more of a wow factor I’ll play with it to amp up the flavour. This one you could leave the parsley out if you like. I know I tend to think of parsley as a last-minute addition to dishes for a pop of colour. I think that comes from the photographer aspect of my job. But it’s lovely cooked into meat. I’ll add lemon or orange zest to this one, if I’m using it along with wet ingredients I love to add roasted garlic in the wet ingredients. If not you can scour your stores for roasted garlic flakes. They can be hard to find here but when I score them I use them in everything.

Also for those peeps who are strong believers in using fresh herbs for cooking, it’s a different ball game with rubs. You need dried herbs so you develop the char, or the bark on meat. If using dried herbs you want them to be as fresh as possible, don’t use herbs that have been sitting in your pantry for a decade. Go buy good quality dried herbs, or take it one step farther and dry your own. Give your dried herbs a whiff before buying or using them. The aroma should still be there, if it smells rancid or there’s no smell they are not worth using. Store all your rubs in a cool, dark space. I know it’s so tempting to display them but it’s not good for them. I store all mine in mason jars in my pantry. We’re about to do some minor renovations to our kitchen. We’ll be taking down the wall between the kitchen and living room. So I’m scheming to build a whole long wall of storage for my spices. Right now mine are hard to get at. So I’m thinking we might build a long, narrow pie safe type deal down the one wall. We’ll see how the plans go. It may end up being the wall for the TV. Priorities right.

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Grill Tip:

Rubs with a high sugar content tend to be cooked on indirect heat. Otherwise they burn. Rubs like this one with a lower sugar content can be used for direct heat. Always keep in mind what’s inside the rub when cooking. I like to use my high sugar ones for a low and slow recipe. Then pop the meat over the direct heat at the end for a little more char. I cannot help myself, I like char. It’s a thing of beauty on good bbq.

Hope you enjoyed today’s tip!

What’s your favourite type of sugar for rubs?

I love light brown sugar for most. On occasion I’ll use dark brown sugar or white. But for me, light just does it for me. I like the taste of it the best when mixed in rubs.

Thank you for spending some time with me today!

Now get in your kitchen and start mixing up some rubs. Play around. It’s like a science experiment. You can try different versions on chicken pieces and do a taste test to see which one you like best. That’s what we do a lot here. I’ll make something 3 different ways and we all vote which one is best. It’s fun and you get to learn what works and what doesn’t. To me that’s what cooking is all about. Experimenting and learning along the way.

Now be confident and get your grill on!

Kim xx