About six years ago I settled on a rub that I liked on my ribs and have used it ever since. It consists of the following ingredients-

1/2 cup of turbinado sugar

1/4 cup of Hungarian paprika

1/4 cup of salt free chili powder

2 TBS of granulated garlic

2 TBS of ground black pepper

2TBS of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

The ingredients-



The ingredients mixed-



Ribs cooked using this rub-



Over the past two or three months I have been thinking about taking a slightly different approach to my ribs and I have decided to try and make them hot and sweet. So I have come up with a rub that I call my Pepper Rub, it contains the following ingredients-

1/4 cup turbinado sugar

1/4 cup salt free chili powder

2 teaspoons of ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon of high heat cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon of ground white pepper

The ingredients-



Mixed-



I intend  to use this rub on ribs that I will foil with maple sugar and glaze with maple syrup. Sweet and Heat.

Two things I should note-

High heat cayenne pepper is 2.5 to 3 times hotter than regular cayenne so if you can't find the high heat you can double the regular.

Ribs cooked using this rub and a light maple glaze-



A third rub that I just recently begun using is called "Pig's Worst Nightmare." This rub recipe was originally posted, to the best of my knowledge, on The Smoke Ring Forum in 2006 by a user with the screen name "Portergolf", he did not attribute the recipe to another source and I can not find an earlier version of it, so I assume he came up with the recipe for this rub. It also should be noted that there is a commercial apple rub sold under the "John Henry" label that predates the "Pig's Worst Nightmare" recipe.

This is the earliest posting of the recipe that I could find on SMF-

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/forum/thread/66420/apple-rub

This the link to "Portergolf's" posting-

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5274

I have adapted this rub from the original version to suit my own tastes( I cut out the garlic and added cinnamon and cut down on the salt), but have kept the ingredient ratios the approximately the same as the original.

My version of "Pig's Worst Nightmare"-

I bought a small bag of dried Granny Smiths at the grocery, about 2.6 oz, this made about 10 TBS of apple dust/crumbs. I don't have a spice grinder so I beat the apples and then ran them thru the small electric chopper. Then I added 5TBS brown sugar, 5 TBS turbinado sugar, 1 TBS Kosher salt, 2 tsp paprika, 2 tsp ground cinnamon and 1 tsp black pepper.
 

Mixed all together-



The method I used to break up the apple chips is what give this rub it's coarse texture. I have cooked ribs with this rub and they were very good, but really prefer the other two for ribs. The "Pig's Worst Nightmare" is, however, excellent on pork loin.