Labour Day long weekend up here in good old Canada and with that comes the Burlington Ribfest! I love ribfests and this one is the largest in Canada so the selection of different styles is great. I've had three full racks of ribs already and have two more in the fridge for later, I'd eat them now but I'm suffering a little gut rot from all the spicy sauces that I have tried (I personaly hate the acid burps). So far this year my new favorite was the Kentucky Smokehouse Team, great sauce and really tender ribs, but hands down the best sauce had to go to the Tenessee Fatbacks Team. Though I have a rack from a New York Team in the fridge and I'm looking forward to trying them when my tummy settles down.

Any of you guys have a good rib cooking secrets to share? I still have not figured out a good way to BBQ them.

I never gone to any kind of specific food festival so do you get free samplers, (<--maybe there?) and decide to pay for a larger portion or do you just get it all for free minus maybe entrance fee? I know I should have put a comma somewhere in there but oh wait nvm *solved* Glad you enjoyed some good food

Low, long heat. 200-220 degrees F (about 95 to 105 C) for 5-6 hours with lots of smoke is the best way to do it. Indirect heat is best. Only sauce them at the VERY end and make sure you leave them on the heat while you're saucing them. A good 4-5 coats will do, generally, but give them time to absorb it between each coat.

I'm pretty good at making ribs.

Went I went to tx gman made some ribs and they were god Damn amazing. You bet he got some that night.

Do you do anything to them prior to cooking them G? I only have a basic propane BBQ, any safe idea's to get some good smoke flavouring? How long between flipping since there on for 5-6 hours? Also thanks for your input all, especially Gman.

Also, at the ribfest you only get to try the sauces for free. We go as a group and all buy from a different place and then share them and see if we like them. There was about 20 different vendors, all with different styles and sauces. I tried the NY Team for dinner tonight, thought they were ok but nothing special. Glad I saved the Kentucky ribs for later. The ribfests move around and if your fan of ribs I would really recommend going, it's a fun time. The Burlington one up here makes it a huge family event with a whole area with rock climbing and bouncey castles and such for the kids and a band shell at each end of the park near the eating areas with live music. There are also a huge area for craft sales and they have vendors selling other types of food like blooming onions and my desert fav Tiny Tom's Doughnuts. I love Tiny Tom's, there bite size doughnuts freshly made right in front of you and you choose the topping of either icening sugar, cinnamon apple or just boring plain. When they are hot and fresh they just melt in your mouth, they are soooooo good! The other nice thing is that vendors hire hot chicks to work the booths so there is an abundance of eye candy everywhere!

If you only have a basic propane grill (this is not a BBQ), use a metal (not aluminum -- preferably steel, without a nonstick coating) pan with wood chips in it on one side of the grill. Loosely wrap the wood chips with foil to keep them from having space to form flames -- you want to starve them of oxygen so they don't flame, but rather smoke. Light that side and leave the other side cold. Put the meat on the cold side. Don't flip the meat -- you're not grilling it, you're essentially baking it. You don't flip a cake when you bake it, do you? If you find that the meat is getting too hot/dark/dry on one side, then you should rotate it but you're probably doing something wrong. You want a nice ambient temperature of around 93-105C and nothing more. After about 4 hours, pull on a piece of the meat. It should just come right off. At that point, you can start saucing things up every 10-15 minutes until you're done. If the meat doesn't fall apart immediately, that's ok. Cook it until it gets really tender -- but if you reach like 5-6 hours and it's still not there yet, take it off the heat, wrap it in foil, and put it in an ice chest (WITHOUT ICE) and let the meat rest there for another 30-45 minutes before F*CKING with it again. Feel free to liberally sauce it before you wrap it in foil to rest, but make sure the sauce is room temperature or warm -- not cold.

Oh, and if you've accidentally overcooked meat and made it too dry, feel free to cover that shit with butter and let it sit in an ice chest (again, without ice) to absorb it while it's still hot. Shit works like a champ.

Listen to Gman when it comes to BBQ, he's from Texas!

Can we sticky this thread just in case anyone else wants to make BBQ because what Gman posted sounds like heaven.........F*CK I'm hungry now.

For real, i'm already bookmarking this, was gonna grab a smoker I passed that was too close to the road o.O...but I can't drive so hauling that shit home manually would suck -_-

Gman gots It all figured out here... I bbq at least once a month . But i use a Nice pit.. that propane aint nvr gona make ur mouth water! apple tree branches and oak where my main heat/smoke source.. I have the cooking process down.. I just need to come up with my own Dank-Heady-Fucking-Mouth Watering Sauce! any suggestions?

My mom actually makes BBQ sauce really well, but I haven't gotten into it yet. I look for store-bought shit that has the following 3 ingredients listed in the first 4: ketchup, vinegar, sugar.

Generally speaking, that's good enough for me. I don't sauce most of my shit out of the smoker 'cause generally it doesn't need it (sauce-on-the-side is a widely-accepted philosophy in TX) and a handful of people who come to my parties -- like my girlfriend's sister -- are allergic to high-levels of citric acid which is abundant in tomato-rich products.

Here are some pics I have:

3 racks of babybacks (split in half to ensure i had enough shelf-space in the smoker) and a pork butt:




Those same ribs cut up -- I had to use a really big knife and just chop them down; slicing wouldn't work as they kept falling apart. Oh, and pulled pork:

holy shit, I'm definitely making barbecue tonight. Just got a smoker, too. I'm so hungry its not even F*CKING funny.

I definitely would say a dry rub is the best start to some ribs. Easy enough to find a basic recipe online and then trick it out to your liking. Ribs generally cook for 75-90 minutes. The last 10 minutes or so u should add either a sauce or you can take em off the heat and wrap em in some foil. This will allow the ribs to retain some moisture and give you the 'fall off the bone' effect. The season will be so cooked in a little steam wont take away from the flavor.