Readers of this blog know that we love ribs. In fact, ribs are the favorite BBQ of many of the blogging team. We can't get enough of them, whether baby back or spare, dry-rubbed, doused in shiny-red sweet sauce, or Asian flavored and sticky. But we realize that not every reader of this blog has access to a smoker. So today we're bringing you a method and recipe, based on one from Chili Pepper Madness, for ribs cooked in your home oven.

Are oven-cooked ribs good?

Yes! Though ribs cooked in a smoker are a special treat, ribs are still ribs, and if you cook them properly they are going to be as tender, juicy, and succulent as any cooked in the smoker. The biggest difference is the lack of flavor from the smoke. We combat that by using some smoked paprika—you could also use some liquid smoke, if you like—and it gets us … about halfway there. There's just something about the way the gases created by fire interact with the meat, changing proteins and creating a smoke ring—not to mention the flavor of cherry, oak, or apple smoke—that isn't duplicated in the home oven.

That being said, the ribs that we made this way were good. What they lack in flavor they make up for in texture. And since a raw rack of ribs costs far less than a cooked slab at a BBQ joint, cooking them in the oven is a fantastic way to slake your craving without breaking your bank.

Why cook ribs in the oven instead of the smoker?

If smoked ribs are better than oven-cooked ribs, even just a little bit, why not use a smoker instead? Well, not everyone has a smoker. Not everyone can have one! Just because you live in an apartment without a balcony doesn't mean you shouldn't have the joy of perfectly cooked ribs at home.

And though you can certainly cook on the smoker in winter, not everyone wants to! Winter BBQ is fine in Oklahoma—heck, even most winters in Utah—but we don't blame anyone in Duluth for not wanting to dig a path to their rig for dinner. If you don't feel like it, just cook them in your oven!

We want ribs now

But there's another reason to cook ribs in the oven: speed. Cooking ribs in the smoker usually takes 4–6 hours because we want smoky flavor. For optimal smoke flavor in our ribs, we usually cook them at 225 or 250°F (107 or 121°C) for the first few hours, at least until we wrap them. That's a slow-cooking temperature. But in an oven, where we're not putting any smoke on anything, we can crank the heat up a bit and get to our goal—juicy, tender ribs—much more quickly. How much more quickly? The ribs in these photos went into the oven, cooked, had a nice little photo shoot, and were all eaten within 4 hours.

Let's take a look at how that happens.

Oven-cooked ribs temperatures

The process of cooking ribs in the oven is the same as in the smoker, but the temperatures are a little different. We preheated our oven to 300°F (149°C) before putting our seasoned slabs in to cook. (We didn't use an air probe because we've already used Square DOT^® to verify our oven's calibration.) As we said above, higher heat speeds us toward the range where the stall should occur. We set the high-temp alarms on both our Smoke channels for 160°F (71°C) and started the cook. (We chose Smoke for this cook because we are cooking in the house so we don't necessarily need the range of Smoke X^®, but we still wanted to monitor both racks of ribs.) In about 2 hours, our alarms had sounded. We checked the surface for bark formation, found it suitable (though notably much lighter in color, due to the lack of smoke), and wrapped the ribs in foil.

Yes, we crutched them. Just because we're in an oven doesn't mean we won't have evaporative cooling as we move our ribs through the stall, so, for speed's sake, we wrapped.

We left the oven at 300°F (149°C) and cooked until the ribs reached 200°F (93°C). We then verified the temperature and tenderness with Thermapen ONE, unwrapped them, glazed them with something sweet and spicy, and cooked for another 10-20 minutes to re-dry the surface of the ribs and make them sticky with the sauce.

That last segment of cooking time is another place where oven ribs have an advantage. If you have a convection oven, use that feature during the last part of the cook for sure. it will dry the surface and increase the stickiness even faster.

Don't let equipment stand in the way of you eating ribs!

If you can't smoke, or just want some ribs soon, you need to try these out. You can play with the rub and the sauce all you want, just like with smoked ribs, and you could follow most of our recipes for ribs on this blog, making modifications for the oven. But whatever you do to season them, make them soon! With our temp tips it's hard to go wrong, and with the accuracy and info provided by Smoke, it's almost a sure thing they will turn out perfectly the first time and every time. Happy cooking!