World Championship Brisket Rubs: The Bests Products on the Competition Circuit

 

The products listed below are the award winning brisket rub recipes that some of the best pitmasters in barbecue have bottled up and made available to the public. These rubs have helped HUNDREDS of people take walks on the championship stage at KCBS events. 

The rubs are listed alphabetically….they are all amazing.

The Best Award Winning Brisket Rubs

• Kosmos: Cow Cover
• Oakridge: Signature Black Ops
• Pellet Envy: The Most Powerful Stuff
• Plowboys: Bovine Bold
• Slap Yo Daddy: Beef Moola

Let’s look at each of these blends and see what makes them great.

Kosmos Cow Cover

Kosmos is a standard on the competition circuit and their products helped win the 2015 World Steak Championships and the 2015 World BBQ Championship.

Kosmos Cow Cover rub flavor profile is salty, savory, smokey with a little kick of heat.

Kosmos was pretty clever with the savory portion of this blend.  The product itself does not contain MSG but does contains disodium inosinate & disodium guanylate.  When you blend these two ingredients together they taste just like MSG.

Disodium inosinate & disodium guanylate are NOT cheap ingredients.  Don’t let the chemical names of these ingredients put you off.  Both products are naturally derived from vegetables.

Care and planning went into nailing the savory aspect of this product.

Cow Cover also contains natural hickory smoke flavors.  This is becoming more and more common on the competition circuit as cooks opt for the precision controlled advantage of pellet grills.

Pellet grills are awesome but they can be a little light on the smoke flavor.  Kosmos takes care of this by adding a little extra smoke of their own.

The extra kiss of smoke from Kosmos’ Cow Cover makes this product a great choice for folks cooking briskets using an electric smoker.

Kosmos Cow Cover Ingredients

• Salt
• Chili pepper
• Other spices
• Sugar
• Dehydrated garlic
• Dehydrated onion
• Paprika
• Disodium inosinate
• Disodium guanylate
• Natural hickory smoke flavor
• Citric acid

Click Here to Purchase Kosmos Cow Cover

 

Oakridge Signature Edition Black Ops

The Signature Edition Black Ops Brisket Rub is freaky good.

The flavor profile has heat form dried chipotles, savory from garlic pepper and onions, and extreme depth from coffee and shiitake mushrooms.

This product was invented was to be the Godzilla of brisket rubs.

Oakridge converted from being a successful competition team to a provider of rubs and brines just a few years ago.  In that short time the teams that use their products have racked up over 5000 top ten awards.

Oakridge Signature Edition Black Ops Ingredients

• Sea salt
• Chilies (including paprika and chipotle)
• Garlic
• Black pepper
• White pepper
• Onion
• Raw cane sugar
• Coriander
• Bolivian coffee
• Shiitake mushrooms
• Other spices

Click Here to Purchase Oakridge Signature Edition Black OPS Brisket Rub

Pellet Envy: The Most Powerful Stuff

The Most Powerful Stuff is a signature rub developed by one of the most successful barbecue cooks in the country, Rod Gray of the Pellet Envy competition team.

If you are interested in Rod’s barbecue credentials then here is where you can check out his list of 62 Grand Championships.

The Most Powerful Stuff is the only product in this list that uses MSG as an ingredient.  Personally I am a huge MSG fan but some people have a sensitivity.

The Most Powerful Stuff Ingredients

• Salt
• Sugar
• Spices including chili peppers
• Brown sugar
• Monosodium glutamate
• Paprika
• Dehydrated garlic
• Dehydrated onion
• Garlic powder

Click Here to Purchase Pellet Envy The Most Powerful Stuff

Plowboy’s Bovine Bold

Plowboys Bovine Bold might be the most widely used brisket rub on the KCBS circuit.

Because this rub is so widely used many teams try to set themselves apart by using this as a base rub and adding a layer of Montreal Steak Seasoning later in the cook.

Plowboy’s uses the same trick as Kosmos and adds disodium inosinate & disodium guanylate to their product to get that deep MSG flavor profile without actually adding any MSG.

The flavor profile is bold, beautiful and complex.  In addition to the standard actors of salt, chilies, garlic and onion they also hit you with tumeric and Worcestershire powder.

I am not a competition guy but after years of experimenting this is the product I keep in my pantry.

Plowboy’s Bovine Bold Ingredients

• Salt
• Brown sugar
• Spices including chili peppers
• Paprika
• Dehydrated garlic
• Dehydrated onion
• Worcestershire sauce
• Celery powder
• Sugar
• Disodium inosinate
• Disodium guanylate
• Tumeric

Click Here to Purchase Plowboy’s Bovine Bold

Slap Yo Daddy Beef Moola

This rub is the “Moola” because it has been bringing home the money for briskets on the competition circuit.

The Slap Yo Daddy barbecue team led, by Pitmaster Harry Soo, developed this rub and they know what they are doing.

Harry has a few awards under his belt.

•  California Team of the Year 2010
• Arizona Team of the Year 2010
• 2010 Grand Champion in Langley, Canada
•  California Team of the Year 2011
• Arizona Team of the Year 2011
• Hawaii State Champion 2012
•  1st KCBS Ranchers Reserve National Brisket Cup 2010
• 1st KCBS Ranchers Reserve National Beef Cup 2011
• Winner of 27 Grand Championships

So, yeah…he knows how to make products that win.  Harry uses maple sugar as a primary ingredient in this rub which gives it a complex and unique flavor profile.

Slap Yo Daddy Beef Moola is “savory with a kick”.  There is a nice level of heat with this brisket rub.

Slap Yo Daddy Beef Moola Ingredients

• Sea salt
• Maple sugar
• Granulated garlic
• Cane sugar
• Chili pepper
• Paprika
• Worcestershire sauce
• Black pepper
• Shitake powder
• Citric acid
• Celery seed
• Cornstarch
• Soy lecithin
• Spices
• Natural flavors

Click Here to Purchase Slap Yo Daddy Rubs Moola Beef Rub

Like I said earlier, when it comes to barbecue there is always a LOT of debate as to what is really the best.

To be honest it often comes down to who you are cooking for and what are their expectations.

I am sure I have left a few great products off of this list. One up and coming product that is getting some serious attention is the Holy Cow rub from Meatchurch.  This product from Matt Pittman has been getting blown up on Instagram and Twitter.

 

So what about it folks….what are some other GREAT brisket rubs that belong on this list?  Drop me a line in the comments and let other folks know which products you love.