Traeger has jumped into the dry rub and barbecue sauce game and you can find a lot of their products at Home Depot as well as Ace Hardware.
I picked up a container of the Traeger Pork and Poultry dry rub seasoning to see if it was worth recommending and walked away with mixed impressions.
Pork and Poultry Rub Ingredients
This Traeger rub has many of the standard ingredients that you would expect from a pork rub along with a couple extras to make it interesting. The full ingredient list is:
- Cane Sugar
- Salt
- Paprika
- Dehydrated Apple
- Onion
- Spices
- Maltodextrin
- Corn Starch
- Chili Pepper
- Honey
- Paprika Extract
The overall flavor profile is sweet and salty with a little bit of spiciness. I can’t tell if I can taste the dehydrated apples and honey or not. The paprika and chili pepper combine to give a nice color to the rub.
How to Use the Pork and Poultry Rub
Because there is so much sugar in this rub it should only be used for “low and slow” smoking. If you try using the rub for high heat grilling the sugar is going to burn and turn bitter.
I like using the rub to smoke baby back ribs and it is also great on boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
Apply a liberal amount of rub onto your meat and let it soak in for about 30 minutes before putting the meat on your smoker. You do not need to use a binder with this rub but it doesn’t hurt if you do.
I find the rub sets up with some nice color and makes a tasty crust on baby backs.
The sweet/salty/spicy/savory flavor profile is spot on I have no complaints about the end results.
This is a solid pork rub that will make you happy.
Customer Reviews of Traeger’s Pork and Poultry
I grabbed the reviews for this rub from the Home Depot website to see what other folks thought about the product.
There were a little over 100 reviews for the rub and, when you combine the 5 and 4 Star reviews it has a 90% customer satisfaction rating.
The biggest complaint that customers left was the same one that I had. This rub is EXPENSIVE.
You get a small 9.25 ounce container for $9.95. This works out to a cost of $1.07 per ounce.
Let’s work through the numbers a bit more….$1.07 per ounce translates into $17.21 per pound. Considering that the main ingredients are sugar, salt and paprika the raw material costs are next to nothing.
The bottom line is that this is a fine rub but you will be paying through the nose for a Traeger label.
