I have never bought a spice mix – never thought I would buy it – that bragged about being “salt-free”. (“Couldn’t be me,” as the children say.) I love salt – and have one constantly growing collection Sodium chloride to prove it. So I was easily shocked and easily scandalized if not one, but two BBQ guys suggested I rub my pork shoulder salt free for Memorial Day. (Don’t worry, they didn’t suggest abandoning the salt shaker entirely.)
How to add salt to your meat when grilling
Salting is actually a very important step in preparing your meat for the smoker or grill, but you should take good care of it before you apply your dry grater. How long before At least a couple of hours, if not days, depending on the size of your cut. (The amount of salt you use also varies from cut to cut – Serious Eats has a pretty good guide for some of the most common ones.) If you apply the salt this early, it will have time to penetrate the inside of the meat and season it instead of just sitting on the surface. The salt removes water from the muscles (that’s osmosis, baby), this water dissolves the salt (a very concentrated wet brine is created) and the meat absorbs the dissolved salt. By the time you’re ready to add a rub, your meat is thoroughly salted.
Unlike salt, a dry rub is meant to sit on the surface of the meat, creating a crust with complementary flavors, and it should be applied right before your protein gets into your smoker or grill. Their ingredients vary widely, but most rubs are made from a mixture of herbs, spices, chilies, and sugar. The flavored chemical compounds in these ingredients are much larger than sodium chloride and cannot penetrate deep into the meat. (According to AmazingRibs.com(Most liniments only get about 1/8 of an inch below the surface.) That’s fine, though, because dry liniments are supposed to sit on the surface and develop that beautiful rind, and they couldn’t if they disappeared into a pork belly.
How to make your own dry grater
There are a couple of saltless pre-made rubs (SnS makes a pretty decent one), but most commercial rubs contain way too much salt to be used on a piece of dry cured meat (some contain almost 50% salt!). Fortunately, it’s very easy to make your own meat, and you can even add a little salt if you’d like – although you don’t have to if you’ve seasoned your meat properly beforehand. Except for the first recipe (which is actually more of a cure) all these simple frictions can be made without salt, and they go really well with a good riffing when you decide which herbs and spices to have hanging in your kitchen. Remember that you can always add a little salt to your dry rub if you feel it is needed, but when you start with salt free rub you are in control and in control is what is predictable (delicious) every time Results guaranteed.
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