Herbs grow. They’re leafy (not woody), and in cooking, they don’t really like heat. Add herbs at the end.
Spices “like” heat. Typically, spices are bark, seeds, roots, and buds.
Did you know famous author Charles Dickens had a legendary spice rack in his grilling kit? It had the best of thymes and the worst of thymes.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the best of barbecue herbs and spices.
My Top Ten with a few tricks blended in:
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Allspice. It’s got it “all.” This is the key to jerk seasoning, AKA the pimento berry
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Celery Salt or Celery Seed. This is nature’s curing salt. Many of today’s “all natural” sausages and cured meats feature celery for their naturally occurring nitrates.
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Chili Powder. Make your own for the best flavor. More in my chapter, Rubs and Pastes
.
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Mustard. There are countless varieties of this tiny seed out. The most common are yellow, brown, and black. I’ll typically use basic dry mustard in seasoning throughout this book. With sauces, I choose the inexpensive yellow, ballpark variety, table mustard, unless otherwise noted in a specific recipe. I’ll almost always coat large meats with it to act as a simple adherent for spices. You use a lot for an adherent, but don’t worry. The mustard flavor disappears during a long smoke.
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Pepper: black, and white. Different strokes for different chefs. For best flavor, grind your own from fresh peppercorns.
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Salt. It’s all just sodium, right? Yes and no. The shape and size of each crystal give you a lot of options. I lean on coarse kosher salt in this book unless otherwise noted, and because of the larger grain size of kosher salt, it is actually less salt in the recipe, so it is not interchangeable with table salt 1 to 1 in a recipe—more on salt below.
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Tender Quick, AKA Fab. Tender Quick is Morton’s brand of curing
salt that is imperative for preserving and pickling. It’s a mix of salt and sodium nitrite and you can use it to bring out that pink color in meats like enhancing your smoke ring.
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Turbinado Sugar, AKA Sugar In The Raw (see below)
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Vinegar. For centuries this acidic liquid has been used to preserve and flavor food. In barbecue, it adds that tang that compliments fatty meats and rich sauces. I like apple cider vinegar for cooking and clear distilled white or malt vinegar for cleaning.
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Worcestershire. Say it five times fast and you still won’t be confident in your pronunciation!