Almost everybody loves to eat slow smoked ribs and it turns out that they are pretty easy to make once you know how. I am going to walk you through a few different videos that show you exactly how to slow cook ribs on a Weber charcoal grill.
Here are four videos showing you how to cook ribs on a kettle. The general steps are:
- Remove the membrane from the back of the ribs.
- Season the ribs on both sides
- Set up the grill to cook at 225-250F with indirect heat
- Cook the ribs for 3-6 hours
While the steps above sound simple there are a few tricks that you have to figure out along the way! The biggest trick is that the temperature displayed on the lid thermometer does not represent the temperature at the grate where the ribs are cooking. The lid thermometer will always be higher than the grate temperature by at least 75 degrees!
You will want to use a digital thermometer located at grate level know your cooking temperature.
The second trick is learning how to control the temperature. The two things you do to control the temperature of the grill are using a small fire and controlling the air flow.
The general technique for maintaining a small fire for 3-6 hours is to start with a lot of charcoal but let it burn slowly from one side to the other. The videos below will show you two ways of setting up your charcoal for extended Low and Slow cooking.
The general technique for controlling air flow is to adjust the lower and top dampers. A good starting point is to close the bottom dampers by about 50% and leave the top damper wide open and adjust accordingly. If you need the grill to be hotter then open the dampers more to let more air flow through the grill. If you need the grill to be cooler then close the dampers more to restrict airflow.
The next trick is figuring out exactly how long to cook the ribs and tell when they are done. How long it will take the ribs to cook in the 3-6 hour timeframe I gave you will depend upon whether you are cooking baby back ribs or spare ribs, how hot the grill is and whether or not you wrap them in foil to speed up the cooking process.
In general, the ribs are done when they hit an internal temperature of about 205F and your thermometer easily slides through the meat.
How to Smoke Ribs On A Kettle Without Any Extra Equipment
Our first two videos show how to smoke ribs by banking the charcoal and by using a snake method. You do not need any extra equipment using these techniques.
Video #1: Smoking Ribs With Banked Charcoal Briquettes
This video shows the absolute most basic way of smoking ribs in a kettle. He is using a pile of charcoal banked on one side of the grill and cooks the ribs on the other side of the grill. Although he is only cooking one slab of ribs there is enough room on the grate to easily handle two.
This cook took a little over three hours. The cook was pretty fast (by rib standards) because he wasn’t cooking at as low of a temperature as he wanted. He wasn’t using a thermometer at grate level to measure temperatures and was using an educated guess as to where the grill was running.
I love the video because it shows just how simple cooking ribs can be!
Video #2: Smoking Ribs With The Snake Method
This video is really different from the first video for two reasons. The first is that it shows you a completely different way of arranging the charcoal. This method is called the Snake Method or the Fuse Method. The second difference is that, after the ribs get plenty of smoke for the first couple of hours, they are wrapped in aluminum foil.
He doesn’t really go into why the ribs are wrapped but pitmasters do this for two reasons. First off, wrapping the ribs in foil accelerates the cooking process and get the ribs off the pit faster. Secondly, wrapping the ribs helps protect the color and prevents them from taking up too much smoke.
Whether or not you should wrap your ribs and exactly how to wrap them is a matter of preference and debate. Don’t worry about that part right now and instead take a few minutes to learn how to set up a snake!
Extra Equipment That Makes Smoking Ribs Easier
I hope the first two videos showed you how easy it is to smoke ribs in a kettle. While both of those methods work great they can be improved with a little extra gear. You don’t need this extra stuff but it is fun buying gear for your kettle and these things do make the process a little better.
Video #3: Smoking Ribs With a Charcoal Basket and Rib Rack
Instead of just dumping the charcoal on one side of the grill he is using a charcoal basket to keep the charcoal neatly organized. A charcoal basket does not hold enough charcoal to last the entire cook so you will need to add more fuel every couple of hours.
He is also using a rib rack in the video which allows him to cook three slabs of ribs at once. You can cook up to four slabs at once with the rib rack he is using.
Video #4 Smoking Ribs Using a Slow N Sear
The Slow N Sear is a fun (but expensive) accessory that is essentially a massively oversized charcoal basket with a built in water reservoir. Some folks claim that the steam produced by the water reservoir helps adds moisture to the meat. I’m not sure of how accurate that claim is but I can attest that it is easy to maintain Low and Slow for at least eight hours on a single load of charcoal.
That’s How You Do It!
There are a lot of details that you get to play with when smoking ribs but the “high level” process is always the same.
There are plenty of things to debate when it comes to ribs and you will need to experiment to find what works best for you. Some of the more common debates are about:
- Whether or not to use foil
- Whether or not to use sauce
- The best dry rub for ribs
- How tender the ribs should be
- What is the best smoke wood to use
- Are baby backs better than spares
Finding your own answers to these questions is half the fun of your barbecue journey!