So easy to have delicious ribs, moist and flavorful and falling off the bone, without a grill or charcoal or smoke, and you won't have to keep checking the fire and risk burning the ribs because your oven keeps a steady temperature. The secret to cooking ribs is: GO LOW and SLOW. A tough cut of meat becomes tender over time if you give it enough time at a low temperature. You can forget about them while the oven does all the monitoring. When you smell them, they're done. This is a wonderful way to cook ribs.

Are they going to win a BBQ Contest? No. But let me ask you: Do you have a pile of BBQ ribs that just won a BBQ Contest and are still hot and are all yours to feast on? No. So let's enjoy what we can, and in a few hours, with very little effort, you can have a pile of delicious ribs that you can feast on. And they are delicious!

Step 1: Any Ribs Will Do

There are beef ribs and pork ribs, each kind will do for this recipe. I'm using pork ribs because I got them on sale. Unwrap the ribs and place them on a foil-lined roasting pan. If they're too long for the pan, cut them as I did. Place them with the curve facing down so they form a hill, not a valley.

Step 2: Cheat!

Now comes the part that gives BBQ Snobs conniptions. I use Kitchen Bouquet, a smoke flavoring that you brush on the meat. Liquid Smoke also works well. I've used both products for making jerky in my oven and can't tell the difference from jerky I've made with a Hickory fire in a smoker. Both versions of jerky were delicious, so I experimented with ribs in the oven and Wow! So good. So much work saved, and charcoal, and going in and out of the house a hundred times to check the grill and make sure nothing's burning. Indoor ribs are better vs outdoor ribs for the simple fact that the indoor ribs get a more consistent Low and Slow cooking from an oven than from a grill. And if the smoke flavor is the only difference, its not really a difference. Sorry foodies, smoke flavoring is so good that almost every brand of bacon is doused with it instead of slowly smoked over a hickory fire. If smoke flavoring wasn't really good, would people love bacon as much as they do?

I rest my case.

Pour the flavoring into a cup and use a pastry brush to brush it on the ribs. (No need to brush it on the underside.) If you don't have a pastry brush use a paper towel and smear it on.

I've also made indoor ribs without using smoke flavoring and they're good too. If you want to skip the smoke flavoring, your ribs will be less flavorful until you slather them with BBQ sauce and then they'll be delicious. (I use Sweet Baby Rays, but I love to try new flavors too. Recommend your favorite BBQ Sauce in the comments section!)

Step 3: Seal the Roasting Pan With Foil

Wrap it tight. Crimp it down along the edges of the pan. You can't make it airtight but you want to try so that the moisture from the ribs and the flavor from the Kitchen Bouquet form a steambath around the ribs. This will keep them moist as they cook and soften the meat and blend the flavors of fat, meat and smoke. So good. Mmmmmmmmm. Ribs.

Step 4: Shove Em in the Oven

Now, put the pan in the oven. If you haven't yet preheated the oven to 275 Degrees Fahrenheit, that's good, because you don't need to preheat the oven. Just turn it on to 275 Degrees and relax.

Forget about the ribs until you smell them. That should be a few hours. If you're high strung and keep thinking: If I put so little effort into these ribs, how can they be delicious? go ahead and do some pushups and situps while they cook. It won't enhance the flavor, but it will make you feel you've put in some extra effort. Tell your guests, when they're complimenting you on making such delicious ribs, that it wasn't easy but the effort was worth it.

Step 5: Wait Til You Smell Them

When you smell delicious ribs, they're probably done. Then you can take them out of the oven and remove the foil. Pinch off a piece and if its soft and tender, they're done. If not, seal the foil back up and put them in the oven for another half hour and then check them again.

The ribs I cooked in this video took about 5 or 6 hours. So if you're planning dinner at 6 pm, put them in around noon. You can slather them with your favorite BBQ Sauce and put them back in the oven for 20 minutes or so to concentrate the sauce and make the ribs easier to handle, or you can serve the sauce on the side. Enjoy!