The important thing with ribs is cooking them. You can have the best rubs on the planet, but if you cook them bad, they taste like crap.

The key is protecting your meat from direct heat. I was blessed to learn this on my own. I ruined a lot of good meat learning to cook with warm air, not a fire's radiant heat. If you don't know the difference, stand facing a big fire, then turn around. I bet your face is a lot cooler looking away from the fire. The air temperature didn't change that much, but the radiant heat sure did.

Early on, I used Aluminum foil as my heat shield of choice. Eventually, I came upon the ceramic plate setter from Big Green Egg (BGE). The plate setter really makes indirect easy. It's simply a ceramic panel that is placed under the grill to protect the meat from flames.

Meat Preparation & Ingredients:

My good buddy TRex does a great job of going over the preparation of the meat with pictures on his baby back rib page. We share a similar conceptual approach, but venture through the cook with slightly different methodology. That's the joy in cooking yourself, you can cook to your taste, not someone else's.

I'm a big fan of rubbing the meat down in mustard and coating it in dry rub the night before a cook.

After experimenting with a lot of different store-bought pig rubs, I narrowed down the ingredients that really make the difference with pork. I've developed the following rub recipe based on my research (Try it out for fun sometime):

Buffy's Pig Rub (in teaspoons)

I recommend grinding dried peppers with a spare coffee grinder to make your own powders. I also recommend kosher salt and cane sugar. I use a mortar and pestle to grind the pecans and other ingredients together.

Cooking Setups:

I cooked dumb for awhile until I found the BGE website. I integrated many wonderful recommendations from frequent "BGE Forum" posters. So basically, I learned some from experience and some from others.

Here's a 3-phase cook:

Smoking Phase: Cook indirect for 1 to 2 hours. Keep your meat away from the edges. Minimize meat stacking. Smoke cannot be absorbed if it's not in contact with the meat. Some people recommend keeping your meat in the fridge before cooking for better smoke absorption. [Dome Temperatures 250F-300F]

Cooking Phase: Cook indirect for 2-3 hours. I always wrap the meat in foil. It keeps the meat moist and raises internal temperatures faster. Two things tell me the meat is cooked, and temperature ain't one of them. If the meat has pulled back off the bones an inch or so, that's a good sign. The truest indicator is if I can push the meat off the bone with my finger. Be careful it's hot! [Dome Temperatures 275F-350F]

Caramelizing Phase: After the cook, the meat is pretty fall-off-the-bone. I typically finish off my ribs by covering it with a sugary BBQ sauce and cooking direct for 15-30 minutes. It caramelizes the sugar in the sauce to make a great little crust. This adds a nice texture to the ribs.

Serving Them Up: Ribs taste great warm or cold. You can't really go wrong. I've tried a fair share of barbecue sauces, but here's my pitch for the best for baby backs. You see, I believe that every cut of meat has a perfect sauce. For example, Bill Green's Sweet And Spicy Muscadine Barbecue Sauce has no competitor when accenting pulled pork (Order @ 770.448.7687 or bbq955@bellsouth.net ).

For reasons unknown, Handlebars Food & Salon in Silverton, CO makes the most complimentary sauce for baby back ribs on the planet. It doesn't make complete sense why these mountain folks figured it out, but the bottom line is they did. You can order Ken's special sauce from this link: http://www.southwestxpress.us/Handlebarsco/foodproducts.htm.