Turn Excess Spice Into Smoky Cheese Spreads
Whether you’re a grilling enthusiast, joker smoker, or barbecue father, you’re likely to get a lot of grill-related gifts, including cheeky aprons, personalized tongs, and lots and lots of spice and seasoning mixes. As someone who writes about grilling and smoking, I get a lot of these rubs sent to me by the people who make them, and I just don’t eat enough smoked meat to use them up in a timely manner. Luckily, these smoky concoctions have a great off-label use: mash them with cream cheese to make a BBQ-flavored sweet-and-savory cheese spread.
I actually got this idea from a bottle of BBQ rub, more specifically , Meathead Goldwyn’s Amazing Smoked Pork Seasoning and Dry Brine . The bottle didn’t give me the exact ratio or the recipe, but as a STEM woman I was able to figure it out. (I rubbed in some cream cheese until it was just the way I wanted it.)
I settled on a ratio of 1 1/2 teaspoons of grating to 8 ounces of full fat cream cheese, but this can vary slightly from rub to grate, depending on the appropriate sodium content. (In fact, some rubs don’t mix the salt at all , so you’ll have to add some salt separately.)
To make the spread, take an 8-ounce block of soft cream cheese and place it in a bowl. Add a teaspoon of the rub to the bowl and mash with a fork until completely dissolved. Serve with pickles, celery sticks or, my favorite, wheat flakes with a dash of pepper jelly. If you want to get really wild, you can mix it with sour cream (double rub) and dip some BBQ chips in there.