Pulled Pork Rub
An all-purpose dry rub for pork — shoulders, ribs, and beyond. Sweet, savory, and a little warm, with a seafood-seasoning backbone that reads as depth, not fish.
Ingredients
about 2 cups- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup sweet paprika
- 1/4 cup kosher salt
- 1/4 cup chili powder
- 1/4 cup dry mustard
- 1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tbsp celery salt (for the Old Bay-style blend)
- 1 tsp sweet paprika (for the Old Bay-style blend)
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper (for the Old Bay-style blend)
- 1/4 tsp cayenne (for the Old Bay-style blend)
- 1/4 tsp dry mustard (for the Old Bay-style blend)
- 1/8 tsp ground allspice (for the Old Bay-style blend)
Method
- 1Combine and store
Whisk everything together until evenly combined, breaking up any brown sugar lumps so it stores and applies evenly. Keep in an airtight jar; best within a few months while the spices stay bright.
Notes
The last six ingredients are an Old Bay substitute standing in for 2 tbsp of the store-bought seasoning — they scale together as a unit if you halve or double the rub. Two overlaps are intentional, not errors: the celery salt adds roughly a tablespoon of salt on top of the kosher salt (Old Bay is salt-forward, so the original rub already carried this), and the sub's 1/4 tsp dry mustard stacks on the 1/4 cup already in the blend (negligible). Both preserve what the Old Bay was contributing rather than editing the rub.