how to slow cook ribs on a weber grill

I love BBQ ribs, but I've never actually attempted to cook them at home until Memorial Day weekend 2020. I figured with the stay at home order's still in place and nowhere to go, it would be a perfect time for me to experiment with cooking ribs at home.

I won't bore you with a story related to growing up eating my mom's ribs, or how she cooks them, because I know you just want to get into the recipe, so let's go through the process I used and how to cook them and then I can bore you with some personal anecdotes if you so choose to read them.

How to Cook Ribs Using the Oven and the Grill

What You Will Need:

Baby Back Ribs (I used 2 full slabs)
A baking sheet
Tin Foil
BBQ Sauce
Dry Rub (if desired)
An Oven
A Grill
A Set of Tongs
A Sauce Brush
A Baking Sheet (2 makes it a little easier)

Those are all of the materials you will need for this recipe. If you don't like brushing BBQ sauce on your ribs while they are grilling, then you won't need BBQ sauce or the sauce brush, but for this recipe I brushed sauce onto the ribs while finishing them on the grill, but sometimes I also like just having the ribs plain (with just the dry rub) and then being able to dip them in whatever sauce I choose.

Step By Step – How to Make BBQ Ribs Using the Oven and Grill

Pre-Heat your oven to 300 degrees.
Place a long sheet of tin foil on to one of the baking pans and place 1 of the rack of ribs on the tin foil.
Flip the ribs over and remove the thin, stretchy, membrane that covers the bottom of the rack. I find it easiest to start at a corner with your fingers until you can get a little bit of the membrane up, and then use a paper towel to get a good grip on it as you pull it away from the rest of the ribs. This membrane can cause your ribs to be chewier than you'd like, so it's always best to remove it.
Generously pour your dry rub onto the ribs and rub into the meat. Flip over the ribs when you think you've got enough, and repeat on the underside.
Repeat the above steps for each rack of ribs you intend on cooking.
Once all of your ribs are perfectly seasoned with your dry rub of choice, wrap the ribs in the tin foil. You'll most likely have a little area of the ribs that isn't fully enclosed by the first sheet of tin foil, so you'll want to pull off another long sheet of foil and flip the ribs over so that, that little opening is face down, and wrap the ribs again. You want to make sure that the ribs are completely wrapped and sealed in the tin foil.
Now, I was able to get two slabs of ribs on to one baking sheet, so I didn't have to stack them in the oven, so once they are all wrapped up in foil, place two racks of ribs on each baking sheet.
Once the oven is pre-heated to 300 degrees, place the racks of ribs in the center of the oven.
Set a timer for 2 hours and 15 minutes. (This is for baby back ribs, if you use larger ribs you may have to move it up to 3-3:15).
After the timer has gone off, go outside and fire up your grill and set it to medium-high heat.
Unwrap the ribs from the tin foil and place however many racks of ribs you can fit on your grill at once.
Using BBQ sauce (if you want) and your sauce brush, generously brush the sauce over the top of the ribs and cook for 5-6 minutes.
Flip the ribs and repeat.
The oven should have cooked the ribs fully so we're just using the grill to add a little char and caramelize the sauce a bit.
Once you've done that with both sides of the ribs, remove it from the grill, cut it up, and serve.

Cooking the ribs in the oven first added to the tenderness of the meat, and everything just fell right off the bone. Nothing was tough or hard to chew, and it was absolutely delicious. Feel free to also dip the ribs in your favorite sauce with every bite to add a little more kick to it.

As I said before, I had never made ribs at home by myself, but I love going to a BBQ restaurant and eating them, so this was a new adventure for me, and it turned out amazing. I will definitely be cooking ribs at home more often now that I've figured out a way that is, not only super easy, but is basically foolproof unless your oven or grill craps out in the middle of cooking.

I mean, most of the recipe is just letting things sit on a heat source. It's really not that hard.

My Love of BBQ Ribs

When I was younger my mom would cook ribs all the time, but I never really liked them and I'm not sure why. I remember them being really tough and hard to get off the bone, stuff always getting stuck in your teeth, and not really being a fan of the BBQ sauce that my parents liked (Open Pit).

As I got older, I think my mom must have started doing something different, or my tastes changed, but something was not the same as it was when I was a kid. The ribs now fell of the bone better, the BBQ sauce wasn't so bad, and I could care less about getting messy eating them with my fingers. It probably helped that I started going to a lot more BBQ restaurants and trying out different things, which lead me to trying more rib recipes, and discovering that I really do actually love ribs.

Then of course my dad got himself a backyard smoker and started smoking their ribs whenever they made them, which made them even better… and I got spoiled. Between now being able to have smoked ribs at my parents house and smoked ribs when we went to a nice BBQ restaurant, I felt like trying to make them at home, without a smoker, would be a waste of time.

But it definitely was not.

Even without a smoker, the recipe above turned out way better than I expected and I'm glad I gave it a shot.

I'll definitely be making this BBQ rib recipe more often now that I know how easy and delicious it is, but I still can't wait to be able to get back out and enjoy some of our favorite BBQ spots, while eating AT the restaurant.

Do you have a different spin on a rib recipe that's easier than most people think? Let me know in the comments. Or maybe you have an awesome dry rub recipe you'd like to share? I'd love to hear them.