Dry rubs and Marinades: How to use them?

Dry rubs build flavour on the surface. Marinades combine flavour with moisture and time.

Neither is better.

They're simply different ways of building flavour.

When should you use a dry rub?

Reach for a dry rub seasoning when you want a strong layer of spice on the outside of your food.

Dry rubs are particularly good for:

• Roast chicken
• Grilled chicken
• Fish
• Prawns
• Pork
• Lamb
• Roast vegetables
• Potatoes
• Corn
• Paneer
• Tofu

They're especially good when you want the spices to toast against high heat and form a delicious crust.

A dry rub can also be an incredibly easy way to add flavour to vegetables. Toss cauliflower, potatoes, mushrooms or carrots with a little oil and a generous coating of Indian spice rub, then roast until browned.

Suddenly, vegetables are doing considerably more than sitting politely on the side of your plate.

When should you use a marinade?

A marinade is useful when you want moisture, seasoning and time to work together.

Chicken is an obvious candidate, but don't stop there.

Try an Indian marinade for fish, prawns, pork, lamb or vegetables. Marinades work particularly well when you want to prepare dinner ahead of time and let the food absorb flavour before cooking.

For most everyday cooking, anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours can be enough, depending on the food and the ingredients in the marinade. Very acidic marinades shouldn't necessarily be left indefinitely, particularly with delicate foods, because too much acid can affect texture.

When you're ready to cook, remove excess marinade where appropriate and get the food onto a properly heated pan, grill or oven. That's when the transformation happens.

The spices toast. The sugars caramelise. The aromatics become fragrant. The surface browns. And a meal that took five minutes to prepare suddenly tastes like you worked much harder than you did.

Why South Indian dry rubs and marinades are different

One of the best things about South Indian cooking is that flavour isn't built around heat alone. Sourness, bitterness, nuttiness, fermentation, smoke, sweetness and aroma all have a role to play. That's why regional ingredients make such interesting dry rubs and marinades.

Take gongura and Teja chilli. Gongura brings a distinctive sourness while Teja chilli brings a direct, bright heat. Together, they create a completely different flavour profile from a conventional chilli marinade. Or consider ragi, uchelu and Byadagi chilli. Ragi brings an earthy nuttiness, uchelu adds another layer of roasted depth and Byadagi chilli contributes colour and aroma.

Then there is kodampuli and black pepper, where sourness and peppery heat create yet another direction. These aren't generic “Indian flavours”. They're regional flavour combinations, rooted in particular ingredients and food traditions.

How to make a dry rub work harder

The trick isn't simply adding more spices.

A good Indian dry rub needs balance.

Heat

Chillies provide heat, but different chillies also bring different levels of fruitiness, colour and aroma.

Acidity

Dried souring ingredients can give a rub brightness and prevent rich foods from tasting heavy.

Aroma

Spices and aromatics create the first impression of flavour.

Depth

Seeds, roasted spices, fermented ingredients and slow-cooked aromatics give the flavour complexity.

Salt

Salt brings everything together.

The best South Indian spice blends aren't necessarily the hottest ones. They're the ones where you can identify several things happening at once.

How to use a dry rub

Pat your food dry, coat it generously with the dry rub and rub the seasoning evenly across the surface.

For chicken, meat and sturdier vegetables, give the seasoning some time to sit before cooking.

Then roast, grill or pan-fry over appropriate heat.

For fish and prawns, you can use a lighter coating and cook relatively quickly.

The aim is to let the spices toast without burning.

How to use a marinade

Coat your food thoroughly and refrigerate while it marinates.

For an Indian chicken marinade, you might use spices, chilli, oil, acidity and aromatics.

For fish and prawns, a shorter marination is generally preferable, particularly when the marinade is strongly acidic.

For vegetables, tofu and paneer, marinades are an easy way to build flavour before roasting, grilling or pan-frying.

And don't forget the cooking stage.

A marinade isn't the finished flavour. Heat is part of the recipe.

That's where browning, caramelisation and roasting transform the marinade into something much more complex.

South Indian ingredients make brilliant marinades and dry rubs

At Kaaram OK Please, this is the bit we care about.

We don't think regional ingredients need to stay trapped inside one traditional recipe.

Ingredients like gongura, Teja chilli, ragi, uchelu, Byadagi chilli, kodampuli and black pepper can be used to build contemporary South Indian marinades and dry rubs that make everyday cooking easier.

Our marinades and dry rubs take these ingredients and turn them into something you can reach for on a Tuesday night.

Rub them onto chicken. Coat your prawns. Season your fish. Roast your vegetables. Marinate your meat. Put them on tofu. The idea isn't to make cooking complicated. It's to make big regional flavour ridiculously easy to access.

Dry rub or marinade?

If you want a toasted, concentrated spice crust, use a dry rub.

If you want moisture, seasoning and time, use a marinade.

If you want dinner to taste significantly more interesting than the amount of effort you put into it suggests:

Use either.

Marinate. Rub. Cook. Eat.

South Indian flavour doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be good.