How to Smoke Ribs for the Whole Family

I was elbow-deep in raw pork juice at 6:15 AM on a Saturday, staring blankly at a massive, slippery cut of meat while Maya, who's seven and currently entrenched in her "question everything" phase, stood three inches from my hip asking if we were eating actual babies. I had a half-empty mug of lukewarm coffee balanced precariously on the edge of the cutting board, and my husband was out on the patio, aggressively refreshing the wireless thermometer app on his phone like it was some kind of needy e baby that required his undivided attention. Meanwhile, I was inside trying to explain the basic anatomy of a pig to a second grader before the sun was even fully up.

Because apparently, when you decide you want to learn the whole process to smoke baby back ribs for a family gathering, you've to sacrifice your morning peace. They're called baby backs just because they come from the upper ribcage and they're shorter than spare ribs, which I tried to explain to Maya, but she was already wandering away to poke her younger brother. Anyway, the point is, making backyard barbecue with little kids running around is a total circus, but if you do it right, it yields this incredibly tender, protein-heavy meat that even my four-year-old picky eater will actually consume without a fight. Worth it. Barely.

That weird plastic skin on the back

The first thing you've to do, which no one warns you about when you buy the meat, is remove the silverskin. It’s this horrible, thin membrane on the bone side of the ribs that, if you leave it on, turns into literal plastic in the smoker and your kid will absolutely choke on it, or at the very least spit it out onto your nice patio furniture. I spent twenty minutes hacking at it with a butter knife, trying to loosen a corner, and then I read online that you're supposed to grip it with a paper towel and peel it off in one satisfying swoop. Oh god, what a lie. The paper towel ripped, my hands were covered in pork slime, and I ended up just aggressively scraping it off in tiny, frustrating fragments until I needed a second coffee. After that nightmare, I just slathered the whole rack in yellow mustard and whatever sweet barbecue powder we had in the pantry and threw it on the smoker.

The two hour waiting game

My husband is obsessed with his smoker and insists on using apple wood pellets because he says the heavy hickory smoke is too aggressive for the kids, which is probably true considering Leo thinks black pepper is "spicy." We do this thing called the 2-2-1 method, which means the meat sits in the smoke for two hours, gets wrapped up for two hours, and then goes back on for one hour to get sticky.

During that first two-hour stretch, the kids usually lose their minds with boredom, so we drag half our living room out onto the grass. Maya and Leo were rolling around in the dirt, dragging my absolute favorite Universe Pattern Bamboo Blanket across the lawn. I know I shouldn't let them take nice things outside, but this blanket is unbelievably soft—like, clouds-made-of-butter soft—and Leo is hyper-fixated on the little yellow and orange planets on it. It naturally breathes so he doesn't wake up sweaty when he inevitably falls asleep on it in the afternoon sun. It has actual barbecue sauce stains on the corner right now, which is a tragedy, but somehow it always washes out and actually gets softer? I don't understand fabric science, but I'm grateful for it.

I also dragged out the Mono Rainbow Bamboo Baby Blanket that I bought last month. I bought it strictly because the terracotta arches looked extremely aesthetic and I thought it would look great on my Instagram grid, but honestly, it’s just fine. The kids completely ignore it because the colors are too muted for them, so I end up just using it to cover my legs when the mosquitos come out. It does the job. Oh, and if you've a friend having a baby soon, I actually bought my sister the Pink Cactus Organic Cotton Baby Blanket for her shower because the little potted cacti are ridiculous and cute, and I love that it’s GOTS certified cotton so I don't have to worry about weird chemical dyes near my niece.

If you're also trying to survive a long afternoon in the yard while your husband stares at a metal tube full of meat, you should really grab something from their collection of organic baby essentials so your kids have somewhere soft to crash.

The great honey panic of 2019

Okay, so after two hours, you've to take the ribs off and wrap them tightly in heavy-duty aluminum foil. This is called the "Texas Crutch," which sounds like a wrestling move but is really just a way to steam the meat so it gets insanely tender. Most normal barbecue recipes tell you to lay down pads of butter, brown sugar, and a huge drizzle of honey on the foil before you put the meat down.

DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE A BABY EATING WITH YOU.

I learned this the hard way when Leo was about nine months old and we were hosting a summer party. Our pediatrician, Dr. Henderson, had casually mentioned at a checkup that honey is basically a biohazard for infants under one year old. She started talking about botulism spores and how babies don't have the right stomach acid to neutralize them? I don't know the exact biology, but the way she explained it terrified the hell out of me. I guess the spores can survive the smoker temperatures too, so even if it's cooked, it's a massive risk. I had a full-blown panic attack on the patio and made my husband scrape all the honey off his prep station. Now we just substitute it with a splash of apple juice or maple syrup inside the foil. It tastes exactly the same, and I don't have to lie awake at 3 AM googling infant botulism signs.

How we really know the meat is safe

Once the ribs have steamed in their foil sleeping bags for two hours, you unwrap them—carefully, because the steam will melt your retinas—brush them with kid-friendly sauce, and put them back on the grill to firm up for an hour. Here's where the science of cooking meat gets really annoying.

The USDA website says pork is technically safe to eat at an internal temperature of 145 degrees. Which is fine, I guess, but if you pull a rack of ribs off the smoker at 145 degrees and try to feed it to a four-year-old, they'll be chewing on a single bite of tough, rubbery meat for three business days. To get that fall-apart texture where they can honestly chew it, the temperature has to get up to like 200 degrees to melt all the tough collagen.

But sticking a thermometer into ribs is super unreliable because you usually end up hitting a bone, which gives a totally fake reading, and then you overcook them. So instead of panicking about the numbers and ruining the meat by poking it fifty times, my husband just uses the bend test. You pick the whole rack up from the middle with some tongs, and if the ends bow down toward the ground heavily and the meat surface cracks open a little bit, they're done. Also, the meat shrinks back from the bones by about a quarter-inch. It looks totally weird but it works.

The incredibly messy aftermath

By the time we finally brought the meat inside, it was almost dinner time and the kids were feral. Before I even let them near the table, I spent ten minutes pulling the meat completely off the bones for Leo and shredding it into tiny, bite-sized pieces so he wouldn't accidentally inhale a rogue piece of cartilage. Maya insisted on eating hers straight off the bone because she wanted to look like a dinosaur, which resulted in barbecue sauce in her hair, on the walls, and somehow inside her shoes.

Was it exhausting? Yes. Did I need a third coffee to clean the kitchen? Absolutely. But seeing them honestly eat solid protein instead of asking for buttered noodles for the fourth night in a row was a massive win.

Before you commit to spending an entire weekend trying to clean barbecue sauce out of your favorite couch cushions, make sure you grab a new blanket or two that you can just throw directly into the washing machine on hot. Seriously, do it.

Questions I frantically googled while standing at the grill

Can I use a slow cooker instead of a smoker?
God, yes. If it's raining or you just don't have the mental capacity to monitor a fire all day, throw them in a crockpot with a bottle of sauce on low for 8 hours. They won't have that smoky pink ring around the edges, but your kids will literally not care at all. They just want the sweet sauce.

What kind of wood is best if my kids hate smoky flavors?
Stick to the fruit woods! Apple and cherry are our go-tos. We used hickory once and Maya cried and said the meat tasted like a campfire, which I think is a compliment to a pitmaster, but a total nightmare when you're just trying to get your kid to eat dinner.

Is the pink ring around the meat safe?
Yes! I panicked about this the first time because it looks totally raw, but apparently, it's just a chemical reaction between the smoke and the meat. As long as it passes the bend test and it's falling apart, it's cooked. Just don't look too closely at it if it freaks you out.

How do I reheat the leftovers for toddlers?
Wrap them in a damp paper towel and microwave them for like 30 seconds. If you don't use the wet paper towel, the meat turns into literal jerky and your toddler will throw it on the floor. Ask me how I know.

Why do I've to remove the silverskin? Can't I just score it?
I tried being lazy and just cutting little slashes into it once. It was a disaster. It curls up and gets hard and gets stuck in everyone's teeth. Just take the ten minutes to peel it off. Have an iced coffee nearby to cope with the grossness.