How to Cook Ribs on the Grill

Most cooking techniques for ribs take a long time, but are well worth the wait.  However, sometimes we don't have 4 hours to cook ribs!  This recipe is a much quicker, yet still delicious technique for grilling ribs.  We get a lot of questions on how to cook ribs and will cover some other techniques in future posts.  For now though, let's look at this simple recipe.

Simple Baby Back Ribs...
Let's look at this technique step by step...

Step 1, Boil your ribs. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Some people boil their ribs in beef broth, but we find this makes little difference to the taste.  At this point, you will want to start soaking your wood chips for our smoke pouch (see directions in that link).
Step 2, Check to see if they are ready. To make the ribs nice and tender, boil for at least 30 minutes, 45 minutes is ideal.  Check the ribs regularly with tongs.  Then the meat pulls inward, away from the bones, as shown in this picture take the ribs out and place on a platter.

Step 3, Prepare a smoke pouch and light the grill. Here is the secret to adding some of that "slow and low" barbeque taste to your quick cooking ribs.  Continue to prepare your smoke pouch with the now soaked wood chips.  Place the smoke pouch under the grates and light your grill for high heat direct cooking.  Remember to wait until your smoke pouch starts to smolder before moving onto the next step, it's worth the wait!
Step 4,  Start grilling.  At this point, the ribs are mostly cooked and are really juicy.  Now we want to add some flavor and create a nice crust on the outside.  Place the ribs, meat side down, directly over your now smoldering smoke pouch.  Grill for about 10 minutes, moving the ribs around to avoid too much charring in one are.  You are after a slight char and crust as shown in this picture.

Step 5, The Sauce! Once you have developed a nice crust, it's now time to apply some of your favorite barbeque sauce.  Using a brush, brush on your favorite sauce.  At this point, go ahead and turn off the burner directly under your ribs.  Close the lid and allow the sauce to caramelize for a few minutes.

Step 6, Caramelize , not burn! When cooking with barbeque sauce, it is important to remember that sugar burns.  We want to carmelize the sauce a little, but we don't want to burn it.   Keep checking every minute or so.

Once your sauce is caramelized, you are ready to serve!

Grilling ribs can be intimidating, but as you can see from this recipe, it doesn't have to be.  We will cover some other grilled ribs recipes in the future that use more of the "slow and low" technique.  Try this recipe in the meantime, you won't be sorry you did!  Visit www.grillingcompanion.com for more grilling tips.