Welcome! Thanks for checking out Castironskillz Rubs, I’m Rosalie, also known as “Castironskillz”. I’m a Clearwater Florida native grilling instructor and recipe developer, known for my creative and easy to follow recipes. I specialize in seasonal and approachable bbq. 

The Castironskillz story - 

Thankfully my intuition and grit  to follow my dreams has led me to create Castironskillz -  however, I have always been called to BBQ.

My grandpa owned a grill store when I was a child and my dad ran the shop. I spent my early days playing hide and seek in the demo outdoor kitchens, playing pretend kitchen with the cast iron skillets, and eating photo chips dipped in bbq sauce. My uncle Steve was the backyard griller in the family, and he taught me a lot about simple, weekend bbq from a very young age. I followed the family around in the kitchen and would love to help wherever I could. I watched cooking shows instead of cartoons and started cooking in elementary school, dreaming of a career in food. I was a very adventurous and artistic child with many hobbies, but had trouble deciding what I really wanted to do. I decided early on that I was the type of person who was going to see life as a playground until I found my “thing”, if I ever did. This perspective has led to so many opportunities and a series of open doors. I worked as a server at a restaurant in high school while cooking for my siblings and my friends whenever I could. I fell in love with hosting and cooking for others very early on. I loved working at a restaurant and would always enjoy doing prep and side work, or learning from the chef whenever he would be willing to teach me a thing or two. 

I went to culinary school my freshman year of college however decided it wasn't right for me at the time. The Miami college life and the price tag that came with it was not what I wanted in life. I ended up moving home, pursuing a degree in social psychology while working at the neighborhood family restaurant again. I started volunteering with the kids at my church, which turned into a summer job at Cedarkirk Camp and Conference Center - which is the camp where I grew up at. I would teach kids how to cook over the fire and learn outdoors skills like I did when I was a camper. That job led to a 10 year career as a youth pastor. 5 years into being a youth pastor, I decided to take a break to go live at camp. During my time in the woods, I found myself cooking the majority of my meals over the fire. I loved cooking with cast iron, and built up quite the collection when I was out there. I had been posting “recipes” to my personal instagram since 2013, however one day my brother gave me the push to create my instagram, Castironskillz. 

During my year at camp, I visited my twin brother Dylan, who was living in Austin Texas. I fell in love with Texas BBQ. I came home and dove straight into learning how to cook the Texas way, which has forever influenced my style of bbq and led to some amazing opportunities in Texas. I go back to Texas about 2-3 times a year to visit family, and eat or make bbq. At this time, I was dating my husband long distance while he was stationed in Turkey. He received orders to MacDill AFB in Tampa and rented a home not too far from the camp where we spent our days canoeing, rock climbing and enjoying dates nights by cooking over the fire. After my year at camp, I moved back to Clearwater and got a job as a youth pastor fulltime. My husband, Andy and I bought our first home in our hometown. A border line dust pit for a backyard and all I had was a fire pit and a broken oven. We only had the home for a month before I hosted my first thanksgiving, where I cooked the turkey over the fire and I have been hosting ever since. Over the years I have transformed that backyard into my grilling space and studio for my recipe development. 

Only 6 months into my youth pastor job in 2020, covid happened and I began working from home. My husband bought me a used Traeger and I fell in love with it. I started selling bbq out of my drive way to family and friends which was an incredible learning experience. I started posting about it, and that led to a side hustle in catering. I did a lot of backyard weddings, birthdays, engagements, baby showers and parties. It was hard work but I loved it and just decided to learn as I went. I started posting more recipes and my account started to take off. Traeger, Snake River Farms and Meat Church took me on early on and I am incredibly grateful for that and have taken pride in working with them for these past 4 years. Though I wasn't making any money off Castironskillz yet, I knew I needed to get serious about making content, but it was a pain cooking out of the driveway. In 2020 I took my first paid sponsorship for a bbq chain and that money was able to pay for my backyard patio and pavilion. I started making videos and my account doubled in followers pretty quickly. During my youth pastor work during covid, I had a chance to reinvent the wheel of youth ministry. I was challenged to make zoom meetings fun and interesting, and eventually did all of my in person meetings outdoors where I started grilling with the kids. When I went back to working at the church, I decided to bring my grill and start teaching the kids how to bbq. That led to years of mission work and cooking bbq with the youth group kids. I would even hire them for catering gigs! 

In 2021 I took my first industry job working at a local meat market as a second job. I started with running the socials and then began to teach classes and host events. Somewhere in 2023 I realized I not only had a fulltime job as a youth pastor, however a fulltime in bbq working for myself as a cater, working for the meat market and at the time working for a grilling subsection company doing recipe work. I basically had 4 jobs for a solid 2 years until I went to Europe for a few weeks for our delayed honeymoon. I came home and quickly realized I had too much on my plate and was exhausted. I wanted to grow my own brand but was too busy helping others with theirs. I wanted to be a great youth pastor, but felt burnt out and tired. I knew I needed a change. 

I decided to leave my full-time job to just volunteer when I could, start my own college group, and join the board of directors at Cedarkirk. I let go of the grilling subscription job to take on contract recipe work for Smoked BBQ Source, and started limiting my catering. I thought I would head into 2024 with more time on my hands, and a chance to grow my own brand but things quickly changed for me. My uncle Steve unexpectedly passed away and my dad got heart surgery and moved in with me. Though I am grateful to have been able to be the person I needed to be for my family at the time, I watched a year go by as I battled grief, stress, depression, and severe burnout. Come 2025 I decided to take back charge of my life and make some serious goals. My goals for 2025 were to have a better work life balance, focus on my mental and physical health, start my rubs, launch a website and youtube. I ended up beginning in 2025 with an opportunity to be a constant on Food Networks BBQ Brawl, where I learned a lot about myself and could really get that kick in the butt to own my time. It was kind of a “last minute thing” and I had no idea what to expect, so it was the perfect combination of scary and crazy to remind myself of who I am. I let that be the push to get my rubs going and here we are just 4 months later. 

When I was working for the grilling subscription company, I worked with over 200 rubs and seasonings. I knew what worked, didn't work, and what would sell. My job was to create recipes using all the rubs and sauces in the box in, so that customers would get the most out of them. I struggled to find rubs that could really meet that criteria, and that some rubs lacked versatility and had way too much sugar or salt. In 3 years of this work I even struggled to find one good steak rub that would also be a great bark. I struggled finding a spicy seasoning that didn't have too much salt, so that the more I added, the hotter it would get. I struggled to find a citrus seasoning without citric acid. This work was what inspired my rubs, Crust, Caliente and Coastal. Though I am still working on my website and launching my youtube, I am really excited to launch my seasonings. I am taking one step at a time!

I have worked very hard to develop three solid rubs that are versatile and packed with flavor. My rubs are coming out of Whiskey Bent BBQ in Lakeland Florida, just a stones throw away from me. Chad Ward has been a great mentor to me in the Traeger world/bbq industry and the team at Whiskey Bent is incredible. Before launching my rubs, I spent hours developing, and too many days to count  “in the lab” creating small batches of my rubs and trying them on different proteins until we were happy. Scott and Nicole at Whiskey Bent know how to make some damn good rubs. We tested them out to customers with free samples and I took insight from friends in the industry. A lot of work has gone into making these rubs and I can't wait to provide you all with endless recipes, tips, tools and tricks. I am finally all in on Castironskillz and can't wait to see where it goes. I appreciate your support more than anything, let's grow this Castironskillz community!