Does anyone have a killer recipe for baby back pork ribs?

Check your Comments for DrBill’s secret to great ribs recipe….

I’ve never cooked ribs either, and didn’t enjoy them at all for much of my life. Then, I finally tried my mother in laws ribs (not her ribs literally, of course, just some that she’d cooked). What a night and day difference from the dried out sticks my dad always served us and called “ribs.”

She uses a dry rub on the ribs, wraps them up in a sealed foil packet, and pops them into the oven until they are pretty much cooked through. Then, she throws them on the grill, bastes them with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce, turning as needed, until they are nice and brown. She serves them up and we all fall on them like a pack of rabid wolves. I will have to get back to you on the oven temp once my mother in law is home from work. I’m guessing it’s rather low, or she’d just throw the foil packet on the grill.

I prefer to first dry rubs, many varieties to choose from or create, then I sear them good, then put them in loosely wrapped aluminum foil over indirect heat, or on the side with fewer coals. Towards the end I throw in either hickory or mesquite soaked wood chips, open up the ribs to soak it all in, and put on my sauce of choice. Similar to what MissAusten just said.

There are 1,000 different recipes for ribs, so you’ll never get a definitive answer. However, I can give you some good tips to put toward whatever recipe you do decide on.

First, cook your ribs in pouches of heavy-duty aluminum foil, and keep them sealed up tight. This creates a moist environment for juicier ribs. Also, cooking liquid never hurts, such as Dr. Pepper or (meh) beef broth. Ale may be good too.

Second, cooking long and low is always better than high and fast. Start as early before serving time as possible, keep the temperature low, and let them cook over time. Long low heat dissolves collagen, turning it into gelatin, and gelatin feels and tastes great in the mouth. To be extra sure you keep it from drying out, employ my first recommendation.

Third, look at the concave side of the ribs. There’s a long, thin membrane that’s stuck to it unless your butcher took it off. It’s almost invisible. Scratch at it until the edge comes up. Yeah, peel the whole freaking thing off. It turns into a nasty kind of chewy paper when cooked dry and a tough piece of skin that won’t go away when cooked wet. It’s bad and it keeps flavor off half the surface-area of your rack.

Happy eating!

Slow cook.

That’s all you need to know.

My best baby back ribs cooked 4 hours at 275, used SWEET BABY RAYS Sweet Vidalia Onion Barbecue Sauce, and a cake pan lined and sealed with heavy duty tinfoil. Another Recipe uses 1 cup of double strength coffee a tbl spoon of liquid smoke, a tbl spoon of brown sugar and a tbl spoon of Worcestershire Sauce again lined and sealed in heavy duty tinfoil. I use this one for pork strips.

Re: my answer above, the oven temp is 325 and she cooks them for about 45 minutes. When the ribs go on the grill, she adds whatever juices are left in the foil pack to the BBQ sauce before putting it on the ribs.

I like to boil ribs for about a half an hour first to tenderize them and then finish them off on a grill to caramelize the sauce which I make from the darkest Bullseye brand mixed with Sri Racha sauce and coarse ground black pepper.

Oh yeah. No shame in starting your ribs in the oven, refrigerating, and then finishing them on the grill. No one will ever know. At least, I won’t tell them. <3

[Adding to my first reply] When you cook them slowly in the oven in a sealed container and pour the barbecue sauce in before you start the meat is so tender its hard to get them out of the pan whole. Also the barbecue sauce is cooked into and through the ribs, not just sitting on top. While they are cooking, the smell in the house is almost unbearable making it hard to wait the 4 hours, but its worth it. [You can do chicken the same way.]

Tip!: Oh, I got one more… you know the ribs are done when you can twist one around in the meat. It means the collagen holding the meat to the bone has melted off entirely.

Thanks and GA to everyone, if only I could share the finished ribs with you all. =)

The recipe is unimportant. The cook time is what you have to be wary of. Indirect heat, 2.5 hours, whatever you want on ‘em. They should be damn tasty.

On my kettle grill I start with 25 briquets on each side of the grill, leaving the middle empty. I season the ribs with garlic powder, seasoned salt, and black pepper (sometimes a bit of cayenne or chipotle, but be careful). Place the ribs in the center, open the bottom vent wide and the top vent ¼, put the lid on, and walk away for 90 minutes. At that time, I add 8 briquets to each side, reclose and come back in an hour if they are dry, 45 minutes if they are going to be ‘saucified’.

If you pick them up and they do not fold in half you haven’t quite cooked them long enough. Did ‘em last night and they were damn near perfect. I lost track of time doing yard work and let ‘em go an extra 15 minutes. Always remember your watch.