Dry Rub or Wet Sauce: When to Use Each

What each one is actually for

A dry rub seasons the food itself and participates in the crust. It goes on before cooking, its salt draws moisture to the surface and then back in carrying flavour with it, and its spices brown along with the surface of the meat. The finished food tastes seasoned all the way through the outer layer.

A wet sauce coats food that is already cooked. It sits on the surface. It cannot penetrate, because the surface has already set, and it is not trying to. Its job is to add a layer of flavour and moisture at the end.

The consequences of using one where the other belongs:

• A sugary sauce applied at the start of a long cook burns to carbon. Sugar burns at around 170 °C, well below roasting temperature.
• A dry rub applied after cooking has nothing to adhere to and no time to do anything. It tastes dusty and falls off, which is exactly what happens to dry-dusted wings.

Most chain flavours are a combination: a rub before, a sauce or a butter-bound toss after.

Timing, which is the whole skill

The most common mistake is the glaze one. People brush a barbecue sauce onto ribs at the start of a two-hour cook and produce something black and acrid. The Jack Daniel's glaze page gives the timings for each kind of food for exactly this reason.

The second most common is salting immediately before cooking and expecting the benefit of a brine. Forty-five minutes is roughly the minimum for salt to do anything beyond sit on the surface; overnight is where it is genuinely working.

The butter-bound rub, which is a third category

Most chain wing flavours are neither a dry rub nor a wet sauce. They are a dry blend tossed with melted butter at the moment the wings come out of the heat.

This matters because it behaves differently from both:

• Unlike a dry rub, it adheres, because the fat is the glue.
• Unlike a wet sauce, it stays crisp, because there is very little water in it to soften the coating.
• The fat carries fat-soluble aromatics - citrus oils, capsaicin, the oils in paprika - and distributes them far more evenly than dry powder can.

The technique is always the same: melted butter into a large bowl, hot food straight in, tossed, then the seasoning in two additions with a toss between.

Roughly 60 g of butter per kilo of wings, and about a tablespoon of dry blend. More butter than that and the coating goes soft; less and the seasoning does not stick.

The Lemon Pepper wings recipe is built around this and the whole flavour wall at Wingstop uses it, which is why one wing technique unlocks eleven flavours.

Building a rub that works, in five parts

Every dry rub on this site is built from the same five components in different proportions.

Salt, 20 to 40 per cent. The largest single component in most rubs. It seasons and it draws moisture. The KFC blend is about a third salt, because it is diluted into two kilos of flour.

A bulk spice, 20 to 35 per cent. Usually paprika, sometimes chilli powder. Provides colour, body and a mild base flavour that everything else sits on.

Aromatics, 10 to 20 per cent. Garlic powder, onion powder, celery salt. These are the savoury backbone.

Heat, 2 to 10 per cent. Cayenne, black pepper, white pepper. The dial.

Character, 1 to 5 per cent. The thing that makes it identifiable. White pepper in a KFC blend, celery salt in a Cajun blend, dried lemon zest in a lemon pepper. Small quantities, enormous effect.

Sugar, 0 to 25 per cent, and only if the cooking is low-temperature. Above 170 °C it burns.

Get those proportions roughly right and you can build a rub for anything without a recipe.