10 Apr Shashemane Exotic Spice Blends: Tumbulgum Dry Meat Rub
Review by Greg Wagenmakers
Shashemane Exotic Spice Blends: Tumbulgum Dry Meat Rub
Location: Kingsthorpe, Qld
Ingredients: Ethiopian Coffee, Wattleseed, Smoked Paprika, Chipotle Chilli, Anacho Chilli, Brown Sugar, Garlic, Ginger, Cumin, Coriander, Old Man Salt, Brush, Dorrigo Pepperberry
Hailing from the kitchen of Andrew Dove’s Shashemane Kitchen is the wonderful ‘Tumbulgum Dry Meat Rub’. To be brutally honest, I don’t quite understand why it is considered a ‘dry meat rub’. It is a spice mix for everything. I added it to a toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwich! How was it? Excellent. If it can improve a very ‘Plain Jane’ sandwich, then it would do wonders for a cut of meat.
This rub is comprised of a whole host of ingredients but aside from obvious inclusion of various varieties of flora, a key ingredient that is so common in other spices mixes is absent- salt.
Tumbulgum Dry Meat Rub is another refreshing departure from salt-based spice mixes. This rub is fragrant and really allows the herbs and companion ingredients to sing their own story. Could I tell that there was Ethiopian Coffee present? No. Could I determine the presence of wattleseed? No. Could I detect the flavours of Old Man Salt Brush or Dorrigo Pepperbrush? No. But What I can discern is that without those ingredients all blended up into a fine powery goodness, this rub just wouldn’t be the same.
I thoroughly enjoyed the flavours that the rub beheld. The one ingredient that particularly stood out was the brown sugar. Honestly, when is sugar ever included in a spice mix? The answer is rarely and it is the inclusion of ‘different’ ingredients such as those aforementioned that sets Shashemane’s Tumbulgum Dry Meat Rub apart from the competitors.
For flavour, I give this rub a 9/10 and for heat, it gets a 1/10.
