Product Deep Dive: Coffee Chile Rub


Get the great taste you need with Jay D's Coffee/Chili Rub.

Jay D’s Coffee/Chile Rub is a unique blend of chiles, brown sugar, cumin, and other spices. They add a depth of flavor to a number of dishes. You can use it in everything from your famous chili to a crockpot roast, and everything in between!

What’s In A Rub?

By definition, a rub is any mixture of spices whose purpose is to rub on raw food before cooking. When you consider all the different spices and the amounts you can use, there are endless rub possibilities! Our Coffee/Chile rub obviously has some chiles and coffee.

Specifically, we use two different kinds of chiles—chipotle and guajillo—as well as Jay D’s Single Origin Coffee (more on that later). Guajillo chiles are dried versions of the mirasol chili pepper. They’re used in Mexican cuisine to add complex, fruity flavors with a touch of heat. It pairs beautifully with the workhorse chipotle chile. Rounding out the rest of this magic mixture is brown sugar, kosher salt, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, coriander, and black pepper. These spices combine with the coffee to add flavor—and a little chemistry—to your dishes.

Why Coffee?

We blend Jay D’s Coffee/Chile Rub with Jay D’s Single Origin Coffee and a bold blend of spices. Used in Gov’t Taco’s popular Bovine Bureaucracy, this rub works overtime acting as a flavor booster and tenderizer. Not a fan of coffee? No worries! The coffee flavor doesn’t come through the way you’d think. A rub with coffee grounds is great for almost any cut of meat. Here’s our shortlist of why we love coffee:

  • It adds flavor. Coffee grounds will boost the flavor of most meats, like beef, pork, or chicken. Its acidity levels mimic the tannins in wine. Acidity and meat are a delicious marriage. Which, for your tastebuds, means amplified, full-bodied flavor.

  • It tenderizes. Used in a rub, ground coffee in a rub tenderizes the meat. The tenderizing powers come not from the acid, but the enzymes. To get all scientific on you, enzymes break down long protein strands in meat muscle into amino acids.

  • It keeps it moist. Mixing it with other spices (like we do in our rub!) makes coffee behave a bit like a spice itself. On the grill, it caramelizes to form a sweet and savory bark to encrust the meat and seal in moisture and flavor.

Why OUR Coffee?

Now, when it comes to our meats, we’re not going to use just ANY coffee. Jay D’s Single Origin Coffee is sourced from mountains in the Dominican Republic. Flavors of milk chocolate and nutmeg round out a very unique coffee with hints of fig fruitiness. Other flavors that have been suggested are citrus, toffee, creme brûlée, and hot toddy. Every step of the process maintains the authentic flavor of Dominican coffee while starving to meet the best and most ethical practices:

  1. The coffee plants are shade-grown, and the farms are transitioning to organic certification.

  2. The raw beans are imported into the U.S. through direct trade. This transaction allows the farmers to make enough money to reinvest in the land and farming practices.

  3. After arriving in Baton Rouge, we roast them at Cafeciteaux Coffee Roasters to a medium finish.

Check out the story for more information about the story behind our coffee and why it came to be. As far as your grilling, you could boost coffee’s flavor powers even more! Brew a strong pot, then marinate it overnight and grill it with the rub.

Ready To Rub?

Bring our rub into your kitchen and get to cookin’! Then, let us know how you like it. Tag us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and show us your smokes. Cheers!

Add It To Your Cart!