I am digging in the pantry to grab my coffee rub and I realize that I barely have enough to season the piece of pork that is destined for the grill. This is not good, I think to myself. In order to fill the gap, I reach for another rub that was the original inspiration for my coffee rub. To my own culinary dismay, I had to scrape and shake out every morsel out of that container so I could get to the barbecue. As soon as the meat was on the grill, I wrote myself a note to get to the store and buy myself some more of this standard seasoning. I finished dinner and announced I needed to go to the store tomorrow so I could buy more. Buy more?? This is five ingredients. Why am I not making some myself? I don’t know about you, but it was time to resolve that problem. So what is it?

Before I get into what I made, I have talked about rubs on the blog before, but I can’t resist the opportunity to give you another example of the flavor combinations you can achieve. For example, you can check out my coffee rub if you want something that is a little outside the box, but I promise, you can’t go wrong.

Alright, let’s get back to the main event. Say hello to our honored guests paprika, salt, fresh ground pepper, brown sugar, and dried thyme.

Needless to say, when these five get into the room together, you can be certain they will bring amazing flavor that is sure to please any palate.These are guests that I invite to my dinner table time and time again. It is sweet with the brown sugar, spicy with the black pepper, the dried thyme gives it a bit of herbaceous undertone, the salt provides a little bit of punch, and the paprika rounds it out with the earthy, smokiness with just a little a bit of heat on the back end.
This will work for fish, chicken, pork, vegetables, steak, lamb or any other protein you want to cook. You can either use this on the grill or if you are searing in a pan. The possibilities are endless for how to apply it. You could use it for a marinade, low and slow cooking, quick cooking on the barbecue or sprinkle a little on some freshly grilled buttered corn. The corn is one of my favorites!!

How do you make it? It is pretty simple. Mix the following in a bowl.

2 tbsps paprika
1 tbsp kosher salt
3/4tsp-1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp dried thyme

Combine and store and a container of your choice. Done! As usual, feel free to adjust this mixture if you want more or less of anything. I make a double batch as a single batch goes very quickly in my house.

Enjoy!