Maple Garlic Pepper Rub
This stuff is beyond delicious on chicken and pork whether pan-fried, roasted, broiled, or grilled. There’s something so perfect about the sweet and salty, peppery, garlicky rub. It delivers just enough of each of the components without being too much of any of its parts. Speaking of its parts, though, we need to talk maple sugar for a minute. It’s crucial here. Have you ever had maple sugar? Maple isn’t just for pancakes, friends. Maple sugar is pure maple sap that’s boiled down even further than maple syrup or maple taffy and to the point where almost all of the water is evaporated from it leaving a solid sugar. Since childhood, pressed maple sugar candies have been my favourite candy in the entire world. Ah, the beauty of having grown up in maple country…
½ cup pure maple sugar
2 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 Tbsp. granulated garlic
1 Tbsp. black pepper, freshly cracked or coarsely ground
Mix all ingredients together and store in a cool, dark place in an airtight jar.
Makes about ¾ cup.
Cook’s Notes: There really is no substitute for maple sugar here. It’s the distinctive maple flavour that helps boost this rub into the awesome category.
For optimal flavour, keep this rub in a tightly lidded jar in a cool, dark place up to 6 months.
Unless you have a very thin cutlet of meat you’re rubbing and cooking, you will not want to cook things rubbed with this over super high heat. The sugar content is such that it may scorch. It does very well as a rub for items to be braised, slow roasted, or grilled over indirect or low heat/coals.