Why we keep the salt under ten percent

Salt is the cheapest ingredient in almost every spice blend on a grocery shelf, which is exactly why so many of them lean on it. Push the salt up and a flat blend tastes like something. It's an easy trick, and it's also how you end up with a rub that tastes the same on chicken, fish and a rib eye.

Six of our eight blends run at ten percent salt or under. Gulf Coast Blackening sits at nine. That's not a health claim, it's a flavor decision - once the salt backs off, the rest of the blend has to actually do something. Garlic has to taste like garlic. The smoked paprika has to carry weight instead of hiding behind a wall of sodium.

It also means you can be heavier-handed with the shaker than the label suggests without oversalting dinner, which matters more than it sounds like it should when you're seasoning by feel over a hot grill and not measuring anything.

The two barbecue sauces run differently, because a sauce and a rub are doing different jobs and we're not going to pretend otherwise. But on the dry blends, the rule holds: season heavy, salt light, and let the rest of the ingredient list earn its spot in the jar.