Grilled Country Style Ribs Recipe Cooked on a Meadow Creek BBQ26S
Are you looking for a meal bursting with flavor that you can cook in a couple of hours? These country-style ribs cooked on the Meadow Creek BBQ26S, one of our famous backyard charcoal grills, are delightfully tender, smoky, and delicious.
These delicious strips of meat are cut from a pork shoulder, commonly referred to as the Boston butt or pork butt. Usually a pork butt is cooked for 8–12 hours or even longer to make pulled or chopped pork for sandwiches. Sometimes it's cooked for a shorter length of time and sliced.
In this recipe we are cooking strips of a bone-in pork shoulder over semi-direct heat in the Meadow Creek BBQ26S, a versatile backyard charcoal grill.
This charcoal grill uses what I call semi-direct heat—the food is separated from the fire by vertical distance, to give us a cross between direct and indirect heat. The distance from the fire to the meat is enough to make it easy to cook bone-in chicken and cuts, such as these country style ribs without burning the outside.
This recipe calls for a short cook, about 2 hours with the grill running at 275 degrees. The heat is direct enough to crisp the exterior of the meat and the amazing flavor that a pork shoulder is known for is all wrapped up in a delicious smoky flavor.
I'm in... what about you? Keep reading for step-by-step instructions to help you cook these to perfection the first time you try it.
Instructions for Grilling Country Style Ribs
Here is a summary of the steps I used to cook these. Keep scrolling for more details...
I used a 11-pound bag of 100% hardwood charcoal briquettes for this cook. I used my propane torch to light roughly one-third of the coals in the center of the pile and then mixed the unlit coals with the lit ones with a garden hoe.
I was aiming for 250–300 degrees in the grill. Here the grill was running at 350 degrees, but closing the lid, adjusting the vents, and adding the cold meat got it into range.
The grill isn't tight even when the vents are closed, so if you have to, you can close the lid vent all the way and adjust the bottom vents to a small crack. If you happen to fire it too hot, you could carefully remove the grate and transfer some of the hot coals to a metal bucket to drop the temperature.
My BBQ26S has the optional stainless steel body and the handsome pedestal base. The stainless steel makes it much easier to maintain and the pedestal base is perfect for a patio or deck.
I picked up these country style ribs from Sam's Club. They were bone-in and cut from pork butts. If your grocery store doesn't have these, ask them about cutting some for you from a pork butt.
Important: Some stores sell country style ribs cut from pork loin, which is a much leaner cut. You can cook those in the same way, but you'll want to make sure you only take them up to an internal temperature of 145 degrees.
To prep these for the grill, I only seasoned them on all edges with Kosmos Q Cow Cover. You can pick this up at Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply, using the link above or browse their large selection of rubs here.
The BBQ26S Charcoal Grill ready for meat.
To load the grill, I hooked the top panel of the sandwich grate onto the lid brackets and arranged the meat on the grate over the fire. I got around 10 pounds of these on at once.
Aren't they looking pretty?
The entire grate pivots, making it easy to flip the meat.
Coming along nicely...
Top down view of the grill:
End view of the grill:
The main concern while cooking these is to keep them from burning by the time they reach probe tender.
Remove them from the grill, pour your favorite barbecue sauce over them, and prepare for an amazing experience!
I really enjoy EAT Barbecue IPO Sauce and Killer Hogs The BBQ Sauce.
Side-cut view:
And here's another one just because...
These revolutionary grills really are one of the barbecue world’s best-kept secrets—an experience hard to explain, but impossible to forget.
Each Meadow Creek grill is handcrafted in the Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with the integrity of workmanship that has made this culture legendary. Our entire line of smokers and grills is designed to deliver many years of trouble-free fun and flavor.
Learn more about this grill and others in this series: