I can imagine what you’re saying: “surely even the CrummyCook has cooked ribs before!  What’s the news here?”

The news is that I’ve never cooked ribs on the gas grill before using indirect heat.

I’ve done plenty of “ribs in the oven”.  And I’ve done a fair share of “ribs in the oven/finish on the grill”.  But I’ve never — until this past 4th of July weekend — done ribs slow-cooked on the grill, away from the heat.

My friend and partner @harrydandrea has been inflaming my desire to try this for some years now.  Not to mention egging me on.  He’s of course an all-charcoal-grill man, with few utils for gas.

But here — with indirect heat — is one of the places gas can shine.  You don’t have to worry about the (lack of) charcoal flavor because your food is not directly above the charcoal.

So it turns out it’s really really easy.  Per Mark Bittman, you just rub the ribs with rub, keep the grill at an internal temperature of no more than 300-350 degrees, and cook for a long time.

Which I did.  Debbie did the rub — cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, a couple of other things, no surprises — and we cooked them for ~6 hours.

Here’s the ribs pre-cooking with the rub on.  Not a great photo (sorry!), so it’s hard to tell how huge they are.  These are three racks of back ribs, very meaty, maybe 3-4 lbs each.

They turned out really really good.  Debbie and I liked them.  We took it over to some friends’ on the 4th and they liked them.  We’ll do it again.