a sauceMemphis dry rub
also: dry rub · Memphis rub · dry
'Dry' in Memphis is not a texture complaint. It is an order, and the other one is 'wet'.
A dry mix of salt, paprika, sugar and spices, patted onto meat before it cooks and shaken over it again after. Memphis barbecue is mostly pork — ribs and shoulders — and its ribs come dry or wet: dry means rub and no sauce, wet means sauce brushed on before, during and after. The same rub goes on wings, which get the rib counter's treatment without the pit.
The story Cited · wp-memphis-style-barbecue
Memphis is one of the four regional styles of American barbecue usually named, with Carolina, Kansas City and Texas. Its cooking is slow, in a pit, and the dry-or-wet fork sits at the centre of it.
The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, held each May, has made the style known beyond the city; Guinness World Records lists it as the largest pork barbecue contest in the world. The Food Network and the BBC cover it and more than 100,000 people attend. Many Memphis barbecue restaurants ship nationally overnight, helped by the FedEx Superhub sitting in the city.
Inference — the rub reached the wing sideways. A rib counter already had the mix in a shaker and a fryer or a smoker in the back, and a wing takes the same shake in a tenth of the time.
How it is done Tradition
Two applications. Rub the wings before cooking so salt and sugar have time to draw and set a crust; smoke, fry or both; then shake more rub over them the moment they come off. The sugar is why a rubbed wing browns darker and why it will scorch on a hot grill. No bowl, no sauce, nothing to dip in unless you ask.
Today Harvested · fdc-adams-reserve-memphis-rub
Sold bottled by dozens of makers and mixed by every barbecue kitchen. As of 16 September 2026 the USDA label panel for Adams Reserve Memphis Barbecue Rub reads 40 mg sodium and 1 g sugar in a ¼-teaspoon serving — 480 mg and 12 g in a tablespoon by arithmetic. Brown sugar is its first ingredient and chipotle its last. No Memphis rib house's own shaker carries a published panel, and no maker publishes a Scoville number.
The particulars
| base | dry-rub |
|---|---|
| heat | mild |
| region | Memphis, The United States |
| confidence | medium · updated 2026-09-16 |
On the label
| what was read | bottle · Adams Extract Co. |
|---|---|
| pepper or chile | #6 on the label |
| vinegar | — |
| butter or oil | — |
| tomato | — |
| sugar | #1 on the label |
| soy sauce | — |
| mustard | — |
| sodium per tablespoon | 480 mg (the FDA counts 2,300 mg as a day) |
| sugar per tablespoon | 12 g (a tablespoon of table sugar is about 12.6 g) |
| Scoville | nobody publishes one for this bottle |
| the label, in order | brown sugar, garlic, sea salt, paprika, spices (including black pepper), chipotle pepper |
Read from this page, 2026-09-16. Adams Reserve Memphis Barbecue Rub, 5.6 oz. Label serving is ¼ tsp (1 g) = 0.0833 tbsp; label sodium 40 mg and sugars 1 g, so 480 mg and 12 g per tablespoon by arithmetic — a comparison unit, not a portion. This is a shelf rub carrying the Memphis name, not a Memphis rib house's own mix: Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous seasoning and the other house shakers return no record in FoodData Central, so their panels are not on this disk. No heat word and no Scoville number on the jar. Every bottle we have read is on the sauce page.
Recipes you can use
Old cookbooks are printed whole, spelling and all. Where a recipe is still somebody's copyright, you get the ingredient list and a link to the rest.
Adams Reserve Memphis Barbecue Rub, as labelled
- brown sugar
- garlic
- sea salt
- paprika
- spices (including black pepper)
- chipotle pepper
Ingredients only, in label order, from the USDA branded-food panel. A shelf rub carrying the Memphis name. The rib houses' own shakers are not published and return no USDA record.
Not to be confused with
- Old Bay Seasoning — Taste the sugar. A Memphis rub is brown-sugar sweet and browns as it cooks; Old Bay is celery salt and stays dusty.
Who it runs with
Where we got it
- Memphis-style barbecue · link
- Adams Reserve Memphis Barbecue Rub — branded food label (FDC ID 1912757) · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.