About Us
Rub My Rack is a Professional BBQ Team from Ft. Ripley, Minnesota. We are a family team made up of Stan & Tonia Dobosenski and our children: Zoe, Gemma & Maizie. We Love BBQ. We enjoy meeting others who love BBQ. We enjoy sharing our love of BBQ with family, friends and neighbors. In our family BBQ is not just a hobby, it is a food a life and a love and we enjoy it every step of the way.
Here’s a look at our BBQ Journey…..
2000…Tonia & Stan Judged their first Pro BBQ at the insistence of Tonia’s boss who was a brand new bbq competition organizer short on judges.
2010…Tonia & Zoe (Age 2 at that time) bought Stan his first smoker an 18” Weber Smokey Mountain.
2013…Rub My Rack was formed and registered as a KCBS competition BBQ team. In August 2013 we loaded up our family team now complete and consisting of Stan, Tonia, 5 yr. old Zoe, 17 month old Gemma, and 5 month old Maizie. We competed in our first ever BBQ competition. We jumped right into the professional competition at The Great Northern BBQ in Brainerd, MN. We were armed with a Weber Smokey Mountain, 2 Traeger pellet cookers, a tail gate Traeger, a front pack and a lot of other baby apparatus, as well as a 13 yr old babysitter. With the front pack full of little Maizie being a pretty main part of Tonia’s BBQ outfit this weekend we did our first Competition… And Walked! (A walk: A term for getting called up to the stage during the awards ceremony) We took 7th place in Chicken and 11th overall. We were hooked!
2014…Our children were still fairly small and a sitter was still needed for competitions. So this year we were able to do 2 competitions.
First, we decided to try a family friendly competition in Watertown, SD called Cooking on Kampeska. We enjoyed the venue and the weather was beautiful and the competition was a lot of fun. This was also our first time competing in any extra categories: blind judged salsa and dessert & people’s choice pork and people’s choice salsa. We discovered that this is a lot of work doing it all but we sure enjoyed it. At this competition Rub My Rack took 5th place in ribs, 1st place in People’s Choice Salsa (our 1st trophy as Rub My Rack) and 2nd place in Blind Judged salsa.
Second, we went back to Brainerd to The Great Northern BBQ. We Placed 10th overall, 10th in pork and 5th in brisket. Always having fun.
2015…Stan was elected to the Board of MN BBQ Association. This year also marked the 1st year for Rub My Rack to compete without a babysitter. Yes we now had a 2 year old a 3 year old and a 7 year old. Each member had chosen their own jobs (with the blessing of Mom and Dad of course) and the kids actually did them! Rub My Rack competed in 7 competitions this year. Starting at Fire on Ice on Mille Lacs Lake in MN, Tonia shared her hobby of fire dance with other competitors at the big Friday night party festivities. Throughout the year of 2015 we got calls at all competitions except 2. Some of the calls included were 9th in Pork, 8th in Ribs, 6th in Brisket, 2nd in People’s Choice Pork, 9th in Chicken, 1st in blind judged Chicken Wings, and 3rd in Chicken (Our first Meat trophy as Rub My Rack!) Big steps were taken by 2 of our members this year: Zoe competed in her first Kid’s Qs, first cooking hotdogs at Kampeska and 2nd making some beautiful Burgers at Big Island BBQ in Albert Lea, MN and while she didn’t win either of them she learned , gained confidence and had a great time. Stan started competing in the new steak cook offs. He won 4th place at Big Island BBQ in Albert Lea, MN.
2016….Every year we are hoping to improve on our prior scores but we are always remembering we do this for family fun and for the love of BBQ.
Thank you to Ironfire, Inc., Compart Duroc, Traeger Grills, Royal Oak charcoal, P4 Global, and Grizzly Coolers for sponsoring the Rub My Rack BBQ Team!
Rub My Rack BBQ proudly supports The Thin Blue Line.