Meat Smoke Fire

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Smoked BBQ Ribs

Smoked BBQ ribs – Wet ribs, dry ribs, sauce on the side, no sauce, smoke, foiled? There are so many ways of doing ribs and they’re all right.

In the barbecue world, you’ll mainly hear about people smoking ribs using the 3,2,1 method. What’s the 3,2,1 method, you ask? Well, it’s cooking the ribs for 3 hours unwrapped, 2 hours wrapped in foil, and then the final hour unwrapped again. Yes, we’ll cook these for 6 hours, low and slow. And yes, it really is worth doing, smoked ribs are superb.

The BBQ ribs are rubbed first before they are cooked. Most people also like to remove the membrane on the back of the ribs before cooking them, I’m not really bothered to be honest, sometimes it keeps them together nicely. It’s also a real faff to get off. The benefit to doing it is your rub and smoke can penetrate from the bottom more easily.

There are two rubs below, either of them work great. They just have slightly different flavours so work out which you like best, or just use a shop bought rub, maybe something from Angus and Oink.

When you’ve cooked smoked bbq ribs, you could serve them with some of the following recipes:

Cooking surfaces

Plate setter icon

BBQ Temperature

Ingredients

  • Up to 6 racks of meaty ribs – if your are using baby back ribs that have much less meat, you will need to reduce the overall cooking time to around 4 hours.
  • Frenches mustard – used as a binder for the rub.
  • BBQ sauce (or use our BBQ Sauce Recipe).

Rub #1 Ingredients – Standard rub

  • 4 tsp Maldon Salt
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1 tsp chilli powder
  • 1 tsp ground white pepper
  • 2 tsp golden sugar
  • 1 cup apple juice
  • 2 racks of ribs

Run #2 Ingredients – Rich rub

  • 10g fennel seeds – toasted
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds – toasted
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds – toasted
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns – toasted
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 10 garlic powder
  • 100g soft brown sugar
  • 50g granulated sugar
  • 30g smoked paprika
  • 100g table salt
  • 1 tsp chili powder

Method

  1. Make up the rub of your choice. If you’re making rub #2 then toast the seeds, let them cool then crush them. Then combine all the ingredients.
  2. Remove the membrane from the back of your ribs – see the notes below. 
  3. Coat your ribs with some Frenches mustard on both sides. This will be used as a binder for the rub. 
  4. Coat the ribs with your rub, you won’t use all of the rub, just enough to cover each side. Some people will then leave the ribs to marinate in the rub for an hour or two. Do this in the fridge. 
  5. Light your EGG and warm it up to 110°C. 
  6. Add a good handful of chips or several chunks to your EGG. As meat takes on the smoke best when it’s cold and wet, you need the chunks to be in the middle of your charcoal where it is burning. 
  7. Use your plate setter feet up with the stainless steel grid resting on the legs.
  8. Add your ribs. If you’re cooking a lot, use an upturned roasting rack to hold them vertically on their sides.
  9. Set your EGG to 110C, normally this is draft door open 1/2 cm and top vent with the tiniest of cracks.
  10. Smoke for 3 hours, spritzing every twenty minutes with apple juice. 
  11. Take your ribs off, spray with apple juice and then wrap in foil.
  12. Cook for another 2 hours at 110C.
  13. Unwrap your ribs and put back on the EGG and cook for 1 hour.
  14. During the last 15 minutes of the cook,  paint with some BBQ sauce. (BBQ Sauce Recipe).
  15. Take your ribs off the BBQ, wrap in foil and rest for 15 minutes.
  16. Serve with coleslaw and even more BBQ sauce.

Notes

The meat should pull away from the bone easily. Some people wrap their ribs for the whole cook, effectively steaming them and the bones just fall out, I prefer a little bite though.

BBQ sauce contains a lot of sugar so make sure you only use it in the last 15 minutes of the cook otherwise it will burn. 

To easily remove the membrane from the back of the ribs, lift the membrane slightly with a knife. Then, use a piece of kitchen towel to grasp the lifted membrane, and you will be able to pull it away from the bones. The kitchen towel will help you grasp the membrane without slipping.

 

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