Cocoa Powder!? GET A ROPE!

I'm really into using rubs on grilled meats lately.  They impart a lot of flavor in a little time and they leave a nice crust behind.  I used to simply leave the meat au naturel when grilling, smoking, or broiling.  What got me into rubs was a recent trip to HEB, where my delightful wife Mercedes and I raided the samples.  We tried some grilled mahi-mahi and were knocked silly by it, so much so that we ponied up for a sack of the stuff.  It was a sample-sized portion of damn fish that did it for me.  You see the irony.

A couple of weeks ago, I smoked a cut of pork that I couldn't name so I'll just call it "chunk of pork."  We ate ourselves brain dead.  Chunk of pork was prepared with a base of olive and canola oils and this garlic paste I don't remember the name of (I'll just call it "garlic paste"), and then rubbed with Kosher salt, coarse pepper, paprika, cayenne, onion flakes, and coffee.  Coffee?  Yes, coffee.  Coffee coffee coffee.  Argue if you'd like, but that was one world class chunk of pork, and we enjoyed it for days to follow in sandwiches and tacos.  


(I also made Carolina-style mustard sauce to accompany chunk of pork.  Further blasphemy!)

I'm off today, so I'm relieving Mercedes' cooking duties, something I don't do much of anymore.  We're having puffy tacos filled with slow-smoked brisket.  I just set that bad boy on the pit for several hours of smoking, but before I did, I, yesiree, rubbed it down.  This time, I prepared the meat with a base of canola oil and soy sauce, and then rubbed it with the following:

• Kosher Salt
• Coarse Pepper
• Homemade Chili Powder
• Garlic Powder
• Coffee.  Yes, coffee
• Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

"Unsweetened cocoa powder" would likely get a man killed at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, but since I'm not stepping foot anywhere near that annual cavalcade of Coca Cola cowboys and collagen-enhanced housewives with cap guns, I'm probably safe.  

We have enough quality kitchen equipment to run a modest-sized restaurant.  My barbecue pit, on the other hand, is not much more than a metal garbage can on wobbly legs with a thermometer.  Sure, I'd love to have one of those cast iron "Texas Hammer" pits that I could cram a whole pig in and haul behind my pickup so I can be an asshole in other Texas towns on weekends; for now, I've got meat in the trash can.  What can I say?  It works.  So well, in fact, that I'll pit my results against any other Weekend Warrior's.

  

As I wrap up this post, the meat's been on for close to an hour, our entire neighborhood is cocking its collective nose toward our backyard and applauding me, and that sack of damn fish is still in the freezer.