Are Your Ribs Done? How Do You Know?

Summer is here, and we all know what that means … BBQs will be out and ribs will be fired up across the nation. But that leads us to the age-old question: How do you know when your ribs are done? Here, we’re going to give you the skinny on these meaty treats.

Get the gear for what you learn in this post here:

Cooking ribs for tenderness, not just safety

First, you can ignore the USDA safety temperatures. Ribs of all kinds may be safe to eat at 145°F (63°C), but they won’t be tender or as flavorful as they should be. In fact, they’ll be downright chewy! The collagen and fat will not have yet melted into the meat yet, so the connective tissues will be inedibly tough.

It is widely agreed that ribs are done between 180 and 195°F (82 and 91°C). Some experts are even more precise and call for a variance of plus or minus only two or three degrees. Virtually all agree that temperature and time spent at temperature are the best gauges of rib “doneness.” Collagen starts to dissolve at about 160°F (71°C), but will take a looooong time to fully render at that temp. At higher temps, it turns into gelatin more quickly. So getting to the correct temp and staying there is crucial.

How to temp your ribs

Temping difficulties

However, getting an accurate or useful temperature measurement is difficult with ribs. The first problem is the number and mass of bones relative to meat. The space between bones can be narrow. And the thickness of the meat there is also narrow. A thermometer reading that is too close to the bone will be different than the temperature at the center of the meat. Most instant-read and alarm thermometers have probes that are too large in diameter to get an accurate reading in rib meat. It can also be a challenge to maneuver the probe between the bones.

The difficulty of getting a good temperature reading has contributed to the propagation of BBQ lore surrounding other “tests” for rib doneness. Here are just a few: the time test, the tong test, the twist test, the popup test, the pullback test, the peek-a-boo test, the toothpick test, the manual separation test, the meat color test, and the fall-off-the-bone test. This is where mythology will mess you up. Several of these are not considered reliable, all are subject to personal interpretation, and some are just wrong. The most common test may be the fall-off-the-bone test. Now, you may like your ribs this way and that’s just fine. But you’ll find a whole forum of people that will tell you about the glories of a “competition bite.” Either way, temperature will help you know when you get where you want to be.

Temperature and the “bite” test

The most respected non-temperature rib test is employed on the professional competition circuit by the likes of the KCBS Certified Competition BBQ judges and is called the bite test. What’s great about this benchmark for a great rib is that anyone can do it. You simply take a bite out of the rib. If you can see where you took a bite – they’re perfect. If the meat falls off the bone – you’ve overcooked them. The trouble here, of course, is that you just took a bite—this isn’t a test for doneness for anyone but the end-user of the rib. If you want to be sure that bite happens, you have to know the ribs are done before cutting them apart.

The solution for perfect ribs: good thermometers!

Enter ThermoWorks’ line of leave-in probe thermometers and our Pro-Series 2.5″ needle probe. Our leave-in probe thermometers, like Smoke and Smoke X, let you track the progress of the cook over time, alerting you as your ribs pass thermal milestones that you set. You don’t have to keep opening the lid and poking/prodding your ribs while they cook to “feel” for doneness.

And the Needle Probe all but eliminates the difficulties of temping ribs between bones. It is is a specially designed thermistor probe (1/16th of an inch all the way up the shaft) that is tiny enough to fit between the bones of even baby back ribs to give you an accurate temperature reading in the meat. Simply position the probe tip in between two ribs at the center of the rack. Make sure your probe tip is immersed vertically to the halfway point of the bones and centered in the thickness of the meat—think of where the coolest point in the ribs will be, and put the tip of the probe there. Set the high-temp alarm to 180°F (82°F). Cook your ribs low and slow. When the alarm sounds, set the timer for at least 30 minutes and make sure the ribs stay between 180 and 195°F until the time is up. (That’s our time at temperature.) The ribs should now meet the competition BBQ bite test. But before you take them off the smoker, test their texture and temperature with your Thermapen ONE instant-read thermometer.

When talking rib cooking temperatures, Meathead from AmazingRibs.com has this to say,

The ideal cooking temp is about 225°F, hot enough to brown the surface, to develop a crusty bark, and to melt fat and collagens. On most cookers, when the oven temp is 225°F at sea level, it takes about three to four hours to cook a slab of baby backs and about five to six hours to cook a slab of St. Louis cut ribs or spares.

They are slightly undercooked at that stage. I then put the sauce on and sizzle it in on a hot grill for about 5 minutes per side. This finishes the cooking and makes sweet sauces taste their best. But you have to stand there and watch them so the sauce won’t burn. If you skip the sizzling step, add another 30 minutes of cooking time at 225°F.

At higher cooking temperatures decrease the cooking time, for example, at 325°F, baby backs can be done in only 90 minutes, but there will be shrinkage and they will be tougher. At higher altitudes, increase the cooking time 20% or more. The key here is to keep the cooking temp under control, and that is the barbecue chef’s craft.

As Meathead mentions, monitoring your cook heat is critical to not rushing nor overcooking the ribs. The Smoke and Smoke X also include a Pro-Series High Temp Air Probe for that exact purpose. The constantly displayed Max and Min temperatures show you your cooker’s performance. With this knowledge, you can perfectly control how your meat is cooked.

Happy summer, and happy cooking!