How To Expertly Cook Both Pork And Beef Ribs At Your Next Barbecue

There are all kinds of ribs we can choose from, but pork and beef ribs are two barbecue staples. Let's say you're hosting a large dinner and you want to provide both pork and beef ribs for everyone. Home chefs may shy away from such a complicated feat, but anyone can do it so long as they know how. To find out what the trick is, we reached out to Aaron Franklin, pitmaster extraordinaire and owner of the famous Franklin BBQ, who is gearing up for his next master class and summit, Smoke & Fire, which he'll be hosting in Mendoza, Argentina February 12 to 16, 2025.

The first step in any type of cooking is picking out your equipment. "There is no 'one size fits all' in cookery," Franklin told Tasting Table. "But in my opinion, a well-designed offset BBQ cooker is the perfect weapon to have in your BBQ arsenal." An offset is one of the most popular types of smokers in the barbecue world thanks to its versatility and ability to impart bold, smoky flavors.

Franklin explained, "A great offset will have areas of high airflow, convective heat, radiant heat, and hotter and cooler spots. These variations allow the cook to pick and choose the most appropriate areas for certain needs." This ability to provide different cooking conditions is no small factor in the offset smoker's popularity and is a big component of how it manages to cook both types of ribs at the same time.

So we've got the tools in hand, now it's time to use them. Let's start by taking a look at what cooking conditions these two ribs prefer. "Pork ribs need less airflow, denser logs, and cooler temperatures," Franklin said. "Beef plate ribs need much hotter temperatures with a cleaner fire and better airflow." We can begin to see why many home chefs prefer not to cook both of these ribs at once. Achieving the right conditions for just one type of ribs can be difficult enough, and now we need to satisfy two different demands in the same smoker.

But Franklin was undaunted. "My suggestion, although not preferable, would be to put the beef ribs closer to the smokestack and the pork ribs on the firebox end of an offset cooker." To accomplish this, you're going to need a big enough offset smoker to handle both meats at once. It would be much simpler to prepare each individual type of ribs separately, but, sometimes, your hands are tied.

Franklin's method plays to the needs of each type of meat, which is all you can really ask for in this type of situation. It's easy to forget the basic fundamentals of which meat likes what, but we tend to make mistakes when grilling ribs when we do. Of course, there's no shame in taking the family out to one of the best barbecue restaurants in the country if the project becomes more trouble than it's worth.