Great BBQ Rub Off: Dust Bros Rub Review

I was lucky enough to be invited to take part in the smokeandsear.world Great Rub-Off this year which is the ultimate BBQ rub showdown. I was cooking some dishes to do a Dust Bros rub review. They had kindly sent me some rubs to review and also showcase as part of the competition.

This is a review of some Dust Bros rubs as part of a 'which is the best rub' competition from another site. Full disclosure, I was kindly sent the rubs from Dust Bros to review as part of this however all opinions are my own and I have not been paid for any review.

Contents

• Where it began
• Meet the contenders for the Dust Bros rub review
• Packaging and first impressions
• The Dust Bros review BBQ cook off
• Reviewing the versatility of Dust Bros rubs
• Try these recipes with the Dust Bros rubs
• Your Comments

Where it began

I was browsing around the Smoke and Sear World Instagram account and noted they had a competition available for finding the best rubs. I commented to advise I'd be interested and was sent some rubs from DustBros.co to take a look at.

There are 7 rubs I had the choice from:

• Serious Spice - A fiery hot and spicy mix
• Gnarly Garlic - A garlic based rub
• Lemon Herbert - A gentle lemon and herb seasoning
• Jerk Bezerk - A feisty Jamaican jerk recipe
• Everything Epic - A good all rounder
• Mega Mexican - Spices for your fajitas
• BBQ Banger - A BBQ seasoning for all occasions

For my events I was going to use three of these and pick my favourite two to submit as the entries.

BBQ Banger - for my pork belly recipe

Serious Spice - for some pork ribs

Lemon Herbert - For a chicken recipe

Meet the contenders for the Dust Bros rub review

I only have 2 available nominations for my entry and so out of the three BBQ cooks I'm doing, I will narrow them down to BBQ Banger Pork Belly and Lemon Herbert Beer Can Chicken.

Packaging and first impressions

Delivery of Dust Bros rubs

The Dust Bros rubs to review were sent to me in a nice box which contained the 7 rubs available for me to choose from. They were kind enough to pack out the box with a tasty bag of crisps too, which got devoured during my photo shoot.

The postage was quick via Royal Mail and arrived in one piece, everything intact and simple packaged. The box lid folded up and this allows for pots of spice to have somewhere to store altogether if you don't have space.

The individual containers

Each BBQ rub was contained in it's own 'Pressitin' tin. The tin comes sealed with a ring pull top to remove the lid but also has a replaceable plastic lid which means you can re-cover the rub if you don't use it all. The rubs are in a 65g serving and that is plenty of rub for a few cooks.

For my lemon herb chicken I used around half of a tin to cover the entire chicken with a generous layer. The all 7 tin collection is priced at £24.95 and if you wanted to buy just one tin, it would be £4.50. There are subscription plans available too which will get you a 15% discount.

The Dust Bros review BBQ cook off

My two Dust Bros review options are the BBQ Banger rub for some pork belly bites and then some Lemon Herbert for the chicken. My original plan was a rotisserie chicken however with space being used on the Weber kettle as a smoker for the pork belly, I opted for my Weber Genesis gas instead.

BBQ Banger - Pork Belly Bites

One of my all time favourite recipes. These are a snack that keeps giving and is a great way to make an interesting side dish from cheap meat. I even this this pork belly I used was from a yellow label supermarket saving and was thrown in the freezer.

Coating the pork belly was really easy with the BBQ Banger rub. A simple shake of the tub to mix it all up, then a teaspoon to sprinkle it all over. It covered really well.

I had a little taste of the rub prior to to cook too and it really pops. The aroma is tasty and while my recipe has a honey and BBQ glaze part way through cooking, it would be perfectly acceptable without. Just the rub alone would be enough to add some flavour to this dish.

Throughout the cook the rub took on the smoke and the heat, no burning (due to a low cooking temperature - around 130C) but maintained integrity throughout. After 3 hours of smoking the glaze gets added and then the meat wrapped. before going in for another 2 hours.

The end result was a really tasty and sticky BBQ flavour that any cook would be proud of.

Lemon Herbert - Beer Can Chicken

In place of the rotisserie that was originally planned, the beer can chicken would be the next in line to cook. I love this dish due to it's effort vs reward. Next to no effort needed but the taste that comes from the finished dish is supreme.

Lemon Herbert is a really tasty rub. I was instantly drawn to adding this to chicken just because I'm a fan of lemon chicken. The rub itself has a much herbier aroma than the others and looking at it I thought my hands would turn yellow when applying the rub. However this was not the case. Around half of a 65g tub would be enough to cover the chicken.

Cooking the chicken took around 80 minutes on the Weber Genesis BBQ. Using the poultry roasting tray I popped in some Estrella Beer (I had a few bottles to get rid of, hence why its also ended up in my beer bread recipe). Then once off the BBQ it was ready to eat.

I noticed that the herbs did burn a little bit and took a lot of colour in the process however this is more likely to my BBQ temperature than the fault of the rub. What it did do though was protect the chicken from burning. So that worked well for me in the end.

The chicken inside (which is the important factor here) tasted amazing. The flavours of the rub had penetrated the meat and were distinct in the taste of the chicken.

I served this along side a roast dinner and the flavour was gentle and not overpowering.

Reviewing the versatility of Dust Bros rubs

Following this Dust Bros rub review I think its fair to say that these rubs I have used work well across a variety of dishes. The flavours of the rubs are unique to each other and certainly hold their own versus any other brands I've used in the past.

I would happily use the Lemon Herbert rub on a few BBQ chicken kebabs. Equally I think the Everything Epic would work well on salad or even a cheese raclette recipe like this one.

Hats off to the team at Dust Bros, I can see these are a force to be reckoned with. Thank you for the opportunity.

Try these recipes with the Dust Bros rubs