How to Smoke Tender, Juicy Pork Ribs

1. Picking your ribs is the first and arguably most important step to creating feast-worthy pork ribs. When you go to the store, they will probably have 10 or more racks of ribs out on display and you want to find the ones with the most meat and least fat. To find them, look for four things: flexibility, marbling, and weight, and thickness.

a. Flexibility – Bend the ribs like a bow from each end to see how flexible they are. The more flexible they are, the less extra fat you have.

b. Marbling – You want some marbling (limited fat in the grain of the meat) but not too much. In addition you want the least amount of bunched up fat that you can find

c. Weight and thickness go together– You want to look at the ribs from the side (from the end of the bones) and see how thick the meat is relative to the bone. This will vary widely, and the thicker they are, the heavier they will be as well.

2. Pick your wood of choice – I prefer Oak with some Apple wood, but others may prefer stronger woods like hickory and mesquite

3. Prepare your ribs – Best results will occur when you do this the night before. Decide if you want to use a marinade, a dry rub, a wet rub, or a combination of all three. I recommend making a dry rub out of your desired spices. Some to consider are black pepper, cayenne, cumin, onion power, garlic powder, and salt. Adding some brown sugar will help consistency and will caramelize the rub nicely when you smoke it.

4. Start your fire – You want the air in your smoker to be around 225 degrees, and each rack will take about 5 hours at that temperature. Using some charcoal to get the fire started will help speed up the process and also maintain a more constant temperature.

5. Brush the surface of the grill to make sure it’s clean, and put on your ribs! Place them bone side down – the concave side.

6. Monitor temperature closely and add more wood to your fire as needed. You can also adjust the airflow through your smoker to raise or lower the temperature.

7. Flip the ribs after about two hours and wrap them in foil for the rest of the time.

8. After five hours pull the ribs off and let them rest for 20 minutes. You should have tasty, succulent ribs! Be sure to verify you have reached a safe temperature for pork, which is 145 to 160. For ribs, closer to 160 will yield the best results.

9. Enjoy!