This recipe is adapted from pitmaster Malcom Reed‘s “Malcom Style Ribs,” published on his site HowToBBQRight.com. Reed is a competition barbecue cook and the founder of the Killer Hogs BBQ team and product line, and this is the method he uses for St. Louis cut spare ribs on his own drum smoker. The steps, temperatures and timings below follow his original recipe closely; where we’ve swapped a branded product for a generic option, we say so.
Spare ribs are meatier and fattier than baby backs, which makes them forgiving on a long, steady cook. Reed’s method holds a single temperature the whole way through, uses a foil wrap to lock in moisture partway through the cook, and finishes with a light glaze rather than a heavy sauce bath. It’s a solid, repeatable process for anyone working with a drum smoker, kettle, offset, or pellet grill.
What You’ll Need
- 2 slabs St. Louis cut spare ribs (ask your butcher to trim them St. Louis style if they’re not already, which just means the rib tips and sternum bone are removed for an even rectangle of ribs)
- An all-purpose seasoning rub (Reed uses his own Killer Hogs AP Seasoning — a coarse salt-and-pepper style blend works as a substitute)
- A second, sweeter barbecue rub for the main seasoning (Reed uses Killer Hogs The BBQ Rub, which is paprika- and brown-sugar-forward; any good commercial or homemade BBQ rub with sugar in it will work)
- 1 cup vinegar-based mop sauce, divided (Reed uses Killer Hogs Vinegar Sauce; a simple cider-vinegar-and-hot-sauce mop, or even apple juice cut with vinegar, is a reasonable stand-in)
- 1/2 cup barbecue sauce, for the glaze
- 1 chunk each of hickory and cherry wood
- 1/2 small onion
- Heavy-duty aluminum foil
- A spray bottle of water
Setting Up the Smoker
Reed cooks this on a drum smoker set up for indirect heat at a steady 275°F, with half the fire basket covered in foil so the ribs aren’t sitting directly over the coals. He adds the hickory and cherry chunks along with half a small onion to the hot coals before the ribs go on — the onion isn’t there to flavor the ribs directly, it’s a trick a lot of competition cooks use to add a little extra aromatic smoke early in the cook. As he notes in the original recipe, any smoker works for this method; the important part is holding 275°F for the entire cook rather than the lower 225°F many low-and-slow recipes call for. The higher temperature renders the fat faster and shortens the total cook time without drying the meat out, since spare ribs carry enough fat to handle it.
Ingredients
- 2 slabs St. Louis cut spare ribs
- All-purpose seasoning (AP rub)
- Sweet BBQ rub
- 1 cup vinegar sauce, divided (reserve 1/2 cup for the glaze)
- 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
Method
- Remove the membrane (silver skin) and any excess loose fat from the back of each slab.
- Season each slab with the AP seasoning and let it rest for 15 minutes so the salt starts to draw moisture to the surface.
- Get the smoker running at a steady 275°F with indirect heat. Add the hickory chunk, cherry chunk, and onion half to the coals right before the ribs go on.
- Season the ribs on all sides with the sweet BBQ rub and rest another 15 minutes.
- Place the ribs on the grate and cook for 2 hours, rotating the rack every 30 minutes so both slabs get even time over the heat. Spritz each slab with water at every rotation to keep the surface from drying out and to help the rub set into a bark.
- After 2 hours, once the ribs have taken on a dark mahogany color, pull them off. Lay out a sheet of foil, pour 1/4 cup of the vinegar sauce across it, and place a slab meat-side down on the sauce. Wrap tightly, sealing the ends but leaving yourself an easy way back in. Repeat for the second slab.
- Return the wrapped ribs to the smoker, on the opposite side of the heat from where they started, for 1 hour, swapping their position after 30 minutes.
- Open one wrap carefully and check for doneness: you’re looking for an internal temperature around 202°F and bones that have started to expose themselves at the ends. If it’s not there yet, reseal and give it more time. Once it’s ready, rest the ribs for 10-15 minutes.
- Mix the remaining 1/2 cup vinegar sauce with the 1/2 cup barbecue sauce. Set each slab on an open sheet of foil (a “foil boat”), brush with the sauce mixture, dust with a little more BBQ rub, and put back on the smoker uncovered for 15 minutes to set the glaze.
- Slice into individual ribs and serve.
Why This Method Works
The two-stage approach — bare on the smoker first, then wrapped in a vinegar-based liquid — is a version of what’s often called the “Texas crutch,” using foil to push through the evaporative-cooling plateau (the “stall”) that happens partway through a low-and-slow cook. Wrapping in a acidic, thin liquid rather than just foil alone also helps tenderize the meat a bit further and keeps the bark from turning to mush the way a heavier braise would. Finishing unwrapped for the last 15 minutes lets the glaze tack up instead of staying wet and sauce-heavy.
If you don’t want to buy the Killer Hogs product line specifically, the technique holds regardless of which rub or sauce you use — the key variables that matter are the 275°F cook temperature, the 2-hour bare / 1-hour wrapped timing, and pulling the ribs at around 202°F internal rather than going by time alone, since rib thickness varies enough between slabs that time-only recipes are unreliable.