Forget The Slow Cooker: Use Ina Garten's Method For Ribs That Fall Off The Bone

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While it is possible to make luscious ribs in your slow cooker, the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, has the secret to the best ribs you've ever eaten — and it doesn't include your Crock-Pot. On Instagram, she shared a recipe from Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust for ribs that will make your summer cookout sing without the aggressive char that can spoil a great baby back rack.

The key, says Garten, is to cook your racks of ribs low and slow in the oven before transferring them to the grill for caramelization, smoke, and maximum saucy stickiness. In her reel, Garten rubs her ribs with spices and shellacs them with a layer of sauce before setting them meat-side up on a baking sheet for a little over an hour. While the ribs are cooking, she fires up her grill to get it nice and hot. Once the meat is tender enough to nearly slip off the bone, she grabs her tongs and transfers the ribs to the grill, cooking them with the lid on for five minutes on each side. 

The final produce looks like it just teleported from Heaven: Sauce crusted a golden brown, beautiful grill marks, succulent meat. Despite using two different cooking methods, Garten's ribs aren't labor intensive and don't require making much of a mess, meaning that you can bet we're taking this hack for a spin as soon as the weather warms up!

Ina Garten uses a homemade BBQ sauce on her ribs (would we expect anything less?), but you could also use a celeb chef-approved store-bought sauce. Additionally, there are dozens of ways to improve store-bought sauce, including cocoa, apple cider vinegar, honey, lemon juice, and/or additional spices. 

If you like your ribs really saucy, go ahead and give them a generous extra coating of sauce before you grill them. Remember that sauces high in sugar will caramelize quickly, so keep an eye on them to make sure they don't burn, and consider a minute or two less over the flames.

And, of course, you can't set out the perfect ribs to live your Ina Garten fantasy without some Contessa-approved sides! In her reel, Garten suggests coleslaw and beans, but we'd get fancy with a delish pasta and/or potato salad to really go over the top. If it's in season, corn on the cob is another dig-in-and-get-messy delicacy that screams "summertime."