A smoked St Louis ribs recipe with only 3 ingredients you say? That’s right, and to sweeten the deal, we’re trying out 4 different rib glazes - you’re welcome. Smoking ribs should not be hard or intimidating, so follow along and you’ll be slinging some amazing ribs in no time.
While smoked St Louis ribs might sound hard for a first-time pitmaster, they really don’t have to be. In this guide, I’ll show you the simplest way to GUARANTEE everyone will be asking for seconds.
To prep the St. Louis cut ribs, just get them out of any packaging and pull off the membrane on the bone side. This membrane is hard, inedible, and will hinder smoke penetration. Just throw it in the trash.
That’s all you had to do! Now give the racks a light coat of rub (I used Dirty Bird, my favorite for ribs), hook them under the 2nd bone (for hanging on the PBC), and they are ready to go.
Fire up the pit - I smoked my ribs on my pit barrel, but you can do this on any pit as long as you can cook on indirect heat. Once mine was up to temp, I put the racks in there and let the heat do its thing.
Cook those ribs for about 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours. In this part of the cook, you’ll be looking for color - once the meat has that gorgeous deep red color, we can move on to the next step.
My secret for juicy, almost fall-off-the-bone tender smoked St Louis ribs is wrapping. Once the color’s looking right, I pull the ribs off the heat and wrap them tightly in aluminum foil. Make sure not to puncture or tear the foil, we don’t want any moisture escaping!
Now usually at this step, you add some sugar, sauce, and other condiments before wrapping. In this recipe I didn’t do that, that’s how much I trust the glaze we’ll be adding later on.
Put the foiled ribs back on the cooker. If you’re using a barrel smoker too, use the grates for this part, and stack the ribs to fit. Just remember to switch the top and bottom ribs sometime in the next 30 minutes.
The smoked St Louis ribs will be ready when a toothpick goes in and between the bones like butter. If the toothpick pulls on the meat a little, put them back on the cooker.
Once your ribs are ready, it’s time for the finale…
Get them off the heat, and open up the foil - let them steam for about 5 minutes to stop the cooking process.
Then slice the rack into individual ribs, and brush on the glaze. You can find links to the ones I used in the ingredient list above, and you can hear what my camera guy Nick thought of his first taste test in the video. As always, you don’t have to use our stuff if you don’t wanna, just use your favorite BBQ sauce or rib glaze.
Enjoy those smoked St Louis ribs!
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