How to Make Fall Off the Bone Ribs

How to Make Fall Off the Bone Ribs –  This ribs recipe was part of a series about winter grilling that I partnered with a BBQ sauce company to complete. That was a long time ago, so I decided to remove the product placement and revert this to just a simple recipe on how to make fall off the bone ribs. 

Are Fall-Off-The-Bone Ribs Overdone?

Before you competition folks start yapping about fall off the bone ribs being over done. realize this, YOU are in the overwhelming minority in this country. The vast majority prefer them that way. And even if you prefer competition style ribs (as do I), it doesn’t mean fall off the bone is trash. If the worst thing you did in a day is eat fall off the bone ribs, it means you had a damn good day. So stop whinging about it and pass this on to your friends who prefer it this way and that would be just about anyone you know who hasn’t competed in a BBQ competition. 

How to prepare ribs for the smoker

Whether you use baby backs or spares, the ribs must be skinned. For this I used a couple slabs of baby backs:

How to Skin Ribs:

Skinning the ribs means pealing back the membrane off the bone side. Leaving the membrane will make each bite tough. To skin ribs, a paper towel is your friend because the membrane is slippery. Use the tine of a fork, the blade of a butter knife or even a chopstick to get under the edge of the membrane and then grab it with the paper towel.

Make sure you have a good grip and pull the membrane back toward the other end of the slab:

Pro tip ~ Some slabs just won’t give up their membrane.

If that’s the case, take a sharp knife and score the bejeebers out of the membrane along the back of the bones. Score it in every direction possible – up, down, left to right, upper left to lower right, vice versa. It will still be tougher than skinned ribs, but it will make them better than leaving the membrane intact.

Do pork ribs need to be brined?

Brining is not absolutely necessary. Ribs that are not brined are tender, juicy and flavorful. But brining ribs will make them more so on all three of those characteristics. Brining tenderizes the meat, makes it juicier and also adds flavor. Feel free to do a side by side with one slab that was brined and one that isn’t. 

For this BBQ rib recipe we will get those ribs into a brine. No, brining is not just for turkey and chicken. I dare you to do a slab by slab taste test with one brined against one that isn’t. I did, and the only times I don’t brine ribs is when I forget to get the brine ingredients which isn’t very often.

What is the formula for brine?

My basic brine is apple cider, salt, garlic and black pepper. The ratio is one gallon of liquid to one cup of salt. So if only a quart of liquid is needed, then only use a quarter cup of salt. Other brine liquids that can be used are any kind of non citrus fruit juice, coffee, sprite, root beer, or whatever liquid you would like infused into the meat. Get creative. I’ve brined in pomegranate, root beer, coffee, sprite, but my go to is apple cider or apple juice if I can’t find cider.

How long should you brine pork?

Soak the ribs in the brine for 4 to 12 hours. Any longer than that and the pork begins to cure. Essentially, if you brine more than 12 hours, those ribs will start to taste and feel like ham. 

How to Season Ribs

The next day, remove the ribs from the brine, blot off the liquid with paper towels and coat the ribs with your favorite rub. No salt needed. The brine took care of that:

Pro tip part deux ~ ALWAYS apply a rub to the bone side first.

That way, when flipped over to rub the meat side, the natural concave of the bones will keep the rub off the cutting board. If the rub touches the cutting board, it will stay on the cutting board which saves from having to reapply the rub down the middle of the meat side of the ribs:

How to Smoke Fall Off the Bone Ribs

How to Make Fall Off the Bone Ribs? Start by getting that cooker ready.

Prepare the grill for two zone or indirect grilling which means coals and smoke wood on one side and the meat on the other. In this case, I’m using my handy dandy kamado grill, so I put the plate setter down above the fire to deflect the heat around the ribs. Target temperature inside the grill is a robust 300F.

For most, the target temperature of the grill is 200F-225F and smoke times are six hours or more. That’s all well and good, but I don’t have that kind of time. I want my fall off the bone ribs done in less than 4 hours. Fall off the bone aficionado’s are going to scoff at that. Scoff all you may, but I will show every step of the way. Hey, that rhymes!

Place the ribs on the side with no heat or on this case above the plate setter which sets between the hot coals and the ribs and deflects the heat around the meat in order to slow cook them:

Which Smoke Wood?

Add some smoke wood to the fire and close the lid. For this cook I used pear and cherry. Although any fruit wood would work like apple, peach, apricot or hardwoods like hickory or oak. If you need a very comprehensive list of what woods work best with what meats, check this list. 

Seeing the ice on top of the grill below gives you an idea of how cold it was when I grilled these ribs. It was so cold my grill was frozen shut and it took me more than an hour to get it open:

I grill so often in the winter, I almost do it more often than in the summer.

Here are the ribs at the 45 minute mark:

At an hour and 15 minutes, I’m still getting great smoke:

After about 2 hours for baby backs (2.5 hours for the bigger spare ribs), it’s time to get those ribs off the grill and wrap in the Texas Crutch.

What is the Texas Crutch?

Time to bust out the Texas crutch. You don’t have any crutches lying around, particularly from Texas? I bet you do. The Texas crutch is nothing more than aluminum foil. It is the key to How to Make Fall Off the Bone Ribs. Tear off a couple big sheets and place the ribs on top, meat side down so the bones don’t poke holes in the foil:

Now add some fluid. The liquid could be beer, wine, butter, honey or even syrup, but in this case, I’m going to use Barbecue Sauce. Make sure to get in in between the slabs and underneath

Close up the aluminum foil and put the foil pack back on the grill so that the ribs can now steam in their own juices and that delectable barbecue sauce:

A Little Food Science

By placing the ribs inside the foil with a little fluid, it allows for the hyper acceleration of the break down of connective tissues which is the technical term for making the ribs tender. And the process is really quick based on smoker time. For baby back ribs, an hour to an hour and 15 minutes (hour and 15 to hour and a half for spare ribs).

After an hour in the foil in my 300F degree grill, you can see the steam action when I open up the foil:

Time to get a good glaze of that barbecue sauce.

Remove the ribs from the foil and place the slabs back on the grill, slathering with that glorious sauce:

Close the lid for about 15 more minutes. Repeat the saucing process one more time before taking them inside to carve. Be careful to get a good grip in the middle as the slab could break apart from its own weight because the ribs are so tender.

How do I know how tender they are? Just by looking at the bones and how much the meat has pulled back from them:

Once the meat has pulled back more than a half inch, we are getting into fall off the bone territory. These had some massive pull back.

Help in How to Make Fall off the Bone Ribs

Foil. The Texas crutch. That’s the easiest way to make the ribs fall off the bone and guarantees the meat is still juicy. So there you have fall off the bone ribs in under 4 hours. In fact, the exact cook time was 3 hours and 35 minutes. Basically the whole key is to over cook the ribs without drying them out. The foil keeps all the fluid confined around the ribs and thus they do not dry out.

If you have any questions about How to Make Fall Off the Bone Ribs, feel free to shoot me an email. Here’s my email address.

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How to Make Fall Off the Bone Ribs Recipe Card:

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5 from 3 votes

Fall Off the Bone Ribs

Step by step, picture by picture, foolproof grilling instructions on how to make fall off the bone ribs. From seasoning to smoking to foiling to serving.

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time3 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Total Time3 hours hrs 50 minutes mins

Course: Entree, Main Course, Ribs

Cuisine: American, American Fare, Barbecue, BBQ, Grilling, North American, Traditional American

Keyword: #Grilled, 3 2 1 Ribs, 3-2-1, 3-2-1 method, 3-2-1 Ribs, Ribs, BBQ Ribs, BBQ, Barbecue, Barbecue Ribs, Brine, Brined, Brined Ribs, Wet Brine, Wet Brined Ribs, Wet Brined Pork Ribs, Pork Ribs, Pork, Primo, Aluminum Foil, Bacon Wrapped Grilled Cheese, Barbecue, Barbecue Ribs, Barbecue Sauce, BBQ Ribs, BBQ Sauce, Fall off the bone, Fall Off the Bone Ribs, Foil, Foiled Ribs, Grill Ribs, Grilled Ribs, Kamado, Kamado Grill

Servings: 6 -8

Ingredients

• 2 slabs baby back ribs
• 1 qt apple cider
• ¼ cup salt
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tsp black pepper
• your favorite BBQ rub
• Your favorite BBQ Sauce

Instructions

• Skin the membrane off the backs of the ribs
• Place in a resealable plastic bag with the cider, salt, garlic and pepper
• Slosh around until the salt is dissolved
• Place in the fridge for 2-12 hours
• After brining, remove from the liquid and blot dry with a paper towel
• Rub the ribs bone side first and then flip and repeat on the meat side
• Prepare the grill for two zone grilling and toss in some smoke wood
• Put the ribs, bone side down on the cool side of the grill and close the lid
• After 2 hours, remove the ribs from the grill and place them, meat side down on a double layer of aluminum foil and pour in some Barbecue Sauce on top and bottom of both slabs (stacking them on top of each other)
• Close up the foil and place back on the grill on the cool side
• After an hour, remove the ribs from the foil, place bone side down and slather with more sauce, spreading with a sauce brush
• Close the lid for 15 minutes and then repeat the saucing process one more time
• Remove from the grill, slice and serve

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

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BBQ Grilling

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This article was initially published on: January 22, 2015