Meat Rushmore Barbecue Regulator Gold Mustard Sauce
Background
Barbecue can form and hold bonds, and that's exactly how it helped a group of former athletes continue to spend quality time together when sports started to have to take a backseat. It was after a 2012 work event at the American Royal that Joel and Katie Fleetwood, Eric Alfrey, and Josh Wunner decided to form the Meat Rushmore team out of their hometown of Lee's Summit, Mo as way to keep their competitive spirits fed but it took the pandemic for the group to really go all in on barbecue since it was something they were able to do often, outdoors, and together. After racking up awards on the circuit, Meat Rushmore BBQ entered and won the third annual Made for KC BBQ Championship in 2025, which gave the team the opportunity to open up a restaurant in the Kansas City airport, and along with that, they began to package their products. They currently have three barbecue sauces, three rubs, and couple other seasonings in their line-up that's available for sale online.
Aroma
A super tangy mustard aroma greets your nose on the first whiff of this sauce. While there's a sharpness to the mustard, a honey sweetness takes the edge off a bit. There's a lot of additional complexity to the sauce as well, with Worcestershire doing some of that work and peppers giving off a smokiness with hints of the heat to the be had in the taste. Deeper nosefuls reveal some more nuanced elements like onion and molasses.
Thickness & Texture
You can see a ton of black spice specks, and some small white ones as well, against the light rusty yellow hue of this sauce. The sauce has a glossy sheen with a very syrupy and smooth consistency along with a medium-thin thickness. From a suspended spoon, the sauce falls in a fast and steady stream that changes to several drips toward the end, and then leaves a thin coating left on the silverware once it stops releasing.
Out of the Jar
A fleeting honey sweet start gets taken over by the harsh flavor of mustard in the initial taste of this sauce. Complexity then builds quickly with tomato adding a slight fruitiness followed by a Worcestershire and vinegar combo that creates tangy and savory elements. The spices begin to pop as the sauce settles on the tongue with black pepper being the first and most prominent of them, but notes of garlic, smoke, and onion are also in there. There's a little ramp up in the heat as the sauce exits the mouth and the mustardy tang persists to leave a lot of flavor in the aftertaste that only has a hint of sweetness remaining.
Slathered & Cooked
This sauce brushed onto chicken in a medium, even layer that set very well over indirect heat. When moved to the less forgiving direct heat, there was no sauce loss and attractive browning without any burning. From the first bite, there was a ton of flavor thanks to the sweet, savory, and sharp mustard flavor. There was a slight bump in the sweetness after being cooked, but there was enough pepper and mustard that a good heat built up to contrast the sugar within just a few bites. By the end of leg, the elements with a lighter touch also came out, leaving a very full bodied flavor that was very much on par with what was experience out of the jar.
Put to Use
Meat Rushmore attracted my attention as a brand I'd never seen before and chose their mustard sauce mainly because I had a few tomato-based sauces in my cart already and wanted something different. I'm not sure how the rest of their line-up is, but if it's anything like Regulator Gold, I can't wait to try them. I thought this was an incredible mustard-based sauce, featuring the sharp bite of mustard while having a ton of barbecue depth that was pretty in your face, but never felt like it was going overboard. It's always special when a sauce can deliver its full range of flavor both in its raw state and after being cooked, and this sauce did just that with the bonus that it rendered a really beautiful chicken leg, something that mustard sauce sometimes struggle to do. So I highly recommend this sauce and think it can really perform just about any task since I can't think of anything I wouldn't want to slather this on. It was excellent on chicken, would be incredible on burgers, ribs, brisket, hot dogs...you name it.
