You can cook a great slab of baby back ribs on the Weber Jumbo Joe but you will start to realize some of the limitations of the grill. In order to cook them with indirect heat I slice the rack in half in order to get it to fit neatly onto the grill. Also, due to the shallow dome, standing the ribs up in a rib rack does not work.
The rib preparation was pretty standard after they were sliced in half. The membrane was removed and they were rubbed with the following:
- 8 Tbls brown sugar
- 3Tbls kosher salt
- 1 Tbls black pepper
- 1 Tbls lemon pepper
- 1 Tbls chili powder
If that rub recipe doesn’t float your boat then here are a few different dry rubs for ribs that I use from time to time.
I used a charcoal basket in this cook. If you don’t have a charcoal basket you can simply bank the coals on the side. I filled the charcoal basket with unlit Kingsford then placed a few lit briquettes and a split of maple on top. Bottom and top vents were set to 50% open; I had an 8 inch drip pan under the ribs.
Ribs at two hours.
Ribs at three hours.
I placed the ribs in aluminum foil then added some margarine, honey and more rub to the meat side before they were wrapped and placed back on the Jumbo Joe bone side down. I added about five more unlit briquettes before I closed the lid (vent over the foiled ribs).
I let the ribs braise for 90 minutes then took them out of the foil and lightly coated with Sweet baby Ray’s. I closed the lid and let them go for another hour.
The ribs ended up great and it’s not a big deal to slice the rack in half to get them to fit onto the grill. If I need to work with two racks of ribs then I do not mess with the Jumbo; I go straight to my 22.5 inch kettle.
Here is a great video from BBQBros.net showing another approach to baby back ribs on the Weber Jumbo Joe. This video shows the Craycort grill grate upgrade.
Be sure to check out some other Weber Jumbo Joe Upgrades!