Easy smoked ribs without the foil. These delicious smoked pork ribs are seasoned with my easy homemade BBQ rub and cooked over smoke until tender.

It’s no surprise that smoked spare ribs are a staple of American barbecue. Pork ribs are meaty, with a good helping of connective tissue and fat between each bone to ensure that each rib is loaded with flavor. These chunky pork ribs are rubbed in spices and slow-smoked for tender meat and the perfect kiss of BBQ flavor.

This simple recipe skips the foil wrap and cooks them dry to give you a beautiful rack of smoked ribs coated with a delicious bark, packed full of smoke flavor. If you’re new to smoking pork ribs, this is where to start.

Spare Ribs Explained

Pork spare ribs are ideal for barbecue thanks to their rich marbling and higher fat content. Cut from the lower (belly) portion of the ribcage—just below the baby back ribs—they’re larger, flatter, and meatier, with more bone and connective tissue. These ribs can handle long, slow cooking without drying out, delivering excellent value with the amount of meat on each rib. Over the course of a 5-hour smoke, the intramuscular fat renders down, producing tender, flavorful ribs with deep, smoky character.

Meat Prep

A quick word on preparing these for the smoker. Squaring off some of the last few bones from either end of the rack will help these cook more evenly. That said, it’s perfectly fine just to smoke these as they are.

Also, common practice is to remove the membrane (the layer of silverskin found on the underside of the rib rack) before smoking. I find it doesn’t make a huge difference, but some people prefer it without, so I’ve included it below.

If you do want to trim the ribs:

On a chopping block, turn the rib rack over so the bone side faces up. You should see the membrane covering the underside of the rack.
Slide a blunt kitchen knife under the membrane, then grip it with a dry paper towel and pull it away from the ribs. Ideally it should all come away in one go, but it often doesn’t so you might need to repeat this a few times to remove it all.
With a boning knife, cut off the four ribs from the thin end of the rack. These are called riblets and can be cooked separately or just chucked away.
Still with the boning knife, trim the long side of the rack to make a neat rectangle.
Trim off any excess fat along the ribs (no need to be too precise here – just the scrappy parts). Then pat dry with paper towels.

How to Know When Spare Ribs Are Done

With barbecue, we often tend to rely on internal temperature rather than hard-and-fast cooking times. While this is easy to do for bigger cuts of meat, things are a bit more tricky with ribs due to the close proximity of the rib bones to the meat, which can make getting an accurate temperature read on the ribs’ ‘doneness’ tricky.

Although an internal temperature of about 203°F (95°C) is a good guideline, I recommend using the ‘bend test’ as a more reliable way to check for doneness with ribs. Use a pair of tongs to lift the rib rack in the middle; you want the rack to bend slightly under its own weight and the meat should start to crack along the top, showing that the pork has broken down and tenderized. At this point the ribs should have a gentle chew to them without being “fall-off-the-bone” tender.

Quick Tips

Look out for Shiners: Any exposed bones can interfere with cooking, so be sure to trim them off during the meat prep.
Let the Rub Soak: After applying your rub, let the ribs sit at room temperature for at least half an hour. The meat will start to ‘sweat’ and soak up the flavors of the rub, and will cook more evenly.
Use a Water Pan: Place a disposable aluminium pan filled with cold water on your smoker grates. Known as a water pan, this helps to regulate temperature and humidity in your smoker.