I love BBQ. I’m talking about real BBQ, which is different from what you do when you grill a steak or throw some burgers on your barbecue.

BBQ, as it means in most of southern and mid western America, means cooking tough pieces of meat over a low smoky heat, for a long time.

It’s not hard to make great BBQ, and I hope to help you understand the how’s and why’s of BBQ, so your next batch of BBQ ribs will be unbeatable.

6 Tips for great BBQ ribs

1 Don’t ever boil your ribs! This is a BBQ abomination. The problem with ribs is that they can be a bit tough and ornery. They are full of collagen, and if not cooked properly, they will be incredibly tough and chewy. You want fall off the bone BBQ ribs, and you can achieve this by boiling them, but it’s a bad idea. When you boil ribs, what you are effectively doing is making a pork broth. You are stealing a lot of the delicious potential flavors from the ribs, and they will be much blander and more one dimensional when cooked this way.

What you really want to do is sort of roast the meat. BBQ is a low heat method of roasting, and by dry roasting will concentrate the great flavors of the meat.

2 low and slow! The secret to tender BBQ ribs is a long cooking time over a low temperature. If you roast these slowly, the collagen in the meat will transform into luscious gelatin, and the meat will be tender and flavorful. You want to keep the heat between 250 and 300. Lower than 250 and you risk drying the meat, and higher than 300 is getting too hot for tenderizing cooking.

3 Take off the silver skin. The silver skin is a membrane that is attached to the underside of the bones. You can’t chew it and marinades, rubs and sauces can’t penetrate it. It’s got to go. Take a knife and pry a little bit off, then grab it with your fingers and peel the while thing off.

4 Season the ribs the night before you plan on cooking them. Rub whatever spice rub you’re using on the meat the night before, to give it enough time to penetrate and flavor the meat.

5 Cook them over indirect smoky heat. You can use any receptacle that will provide heat, and hold smoke. I’ve built an offset firebox smoker, smoked in my brick oven, and found best results from an old gas fired pizza oven. The heat in the pizza oven is nice and steady, and I just whack a big cast iron fry pan full of fruit tree wood with some charcoal mixed in to provide lots of smoke.

The lesson is that it doesn’t really matter what is providing the heat, as long as there is a lot of smoke, the heat is good and even and low; and the meat is not too close to the heat source. You can use a backyard gas BBQ with wood chips to good effect, but it is hard to keep the ribs away from the direct heat of the flames (unless you’ve got a really BIG BBQ!).

You can get a little bullet smoker at most hardware stores for about 50$, and they will work reasonably well, or use your imagination, and design your own cue pit!

6 Don’t sauce until the ribs are done (they’re done when you lift up the rack in the middle a bit, and it threatens to split in two). When they are done, heat the grill up to medium and grill the sauced ribs for a few minutes.

Follow these 6 steps and you are well on your way to an outstanding BBQ meal. People can debate for hours between the different merits of rubs, mops, different woods and sauces; so you will have to make your own mind up about all that. Just remember the principles of low and slow and steady indirect smoky heat, and you will be just fine!

Nothing beats the backyard aromas of an afternoon’s labor tending BBQ ribs, so get out there and enjoy a great weekend afternoon at the cue!

1. Pork. ‘Nuff said. (best meat, cooks the softest, tastes the best easy to agree)

2.Cheap. Who can really enjoy a good meal if you know you’ll be working overtime to pay it off? A good pork plate, including slaw, fries, and a pickle, should run about $5-$6. Ribs — baby-back, of course — might be closer to $10 with all the fixins’. (sorry that not too many have a full rack fries and salw for under 10, but I agree this should price out like home cooking and taste like it too.)

3. Ma-Pa owned. Sure, there are good barbecue chain restaurants, a few of which we rated. But the appeal of barbecue is tasting a person’s homemade sauce, which usually tastes so good that friends and neighbors ask for the recipe. Then the person has a good start at establishing his or her own restaurant. (good is good, I love Fred Flemming’s Chain in Florida, great pulled pork and sauces, but ma and pa atmosphere is best.)

4. A place where everyone knows everyone else — except for us, usually. When Jim the Sheriff and Bob the barber come in for lunch, Louise hollers at them, “Hey boys. C’mon in — your table is open. I’ll bring y’all your usual.” (this is nice in all restaurants, only m,ore important in a BBQ etting)

5. Most of the staff should be plump–a sure sign that the product is worth tastin’.
(fat and happy, and Fat guys rule are two of our facts of this website.)

6. No coupons. Any barbecue restaurant that has to lure you in with a coupon isn’t worth tastin’. It should be all word-of-mouth marketing.
( I would never say no to a coupon, so I can live with paying less if they want me too, though it isnt needed for the right BBQ)

7. The aroma of roasting pork should permeate your senses as soon as you pull in the parking lot–even before you open your car door.
(Wood, pork and fries in the air.)

8. It’s got to be casual enough for entire families–great uncle Norm, Great Grandma Ruth, and little toddler Nick, who can’t sit still or keep his voice down low, no many how many reminders from his step-daddy.

9. Southern accents. Southern town. Southern folks. Southern Southern Southern.
(Now this makes total sense since I have moved to Charlotte, no other will do to me)

10. Vinegar based barbecue is our favorite, but tomato-based, which is sweeter, is a close second, followed by mustard-based. True Southerners would quickly step-up to define which geographical region caters to which type of barbecue–vinegar, sweet, or mustard-based. However, each restaurant caters to what they like best, so we’ve concluded it’s a Southern myth. Each restaurant serves pork just how they like it.
(pulled pork just needs to be soft and flavorful with the right sauces in bottles.)

11. Tributes to the pig in all forms around the restaurant: Pig pictures on the outside signs and menu, pig statues in the waiting area, and bathrooms, pig toothpick holder at the cashier’s station . . . you get the picture. You just gotta be reminded of what animal you’re eating.

12. Greasy fries. You know the kind — fried in the left-over dirty greasy from yesterday.

13.Tart, crisp coleslaw.

14. Free refills on soda, and keep ‘em comin’. If you have to ask your waitress for a refill, she isn’t quick enough. We need something to wash down the grease.

15. If it’s a chain restaurant, it has to specialize in barbecue and preferably mention that in the name. Regular all-American grills with a wide range of food choices don’t produce good barbecue.