Foil-Packet Rib Rub and Sauce
Pork ribs cooked over the fire in foil, using a rub you mixed at home and sauce that rides in a squeeze bottle.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 14 oz
- cal / oz
- 51
- protein
- 45 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 150 min
- total time
- 165 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Grill grate
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- Foil packet
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Pork ribs | 2 slabs | baby back or spare; ask the butcher to cut the rack in half so it fits the foil |
|---|---|---|
| Onion | 1 large | sliced thick, cut at home |
| Chicken stock, beer, apple juice, or orange juice | 1/2 cup | whatever you already brought |
| Paprika | 1 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 2 tsp | |
| Onion powder | 2 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1 tsp | |
| Salt | 2 tsp | |
| BBQ sauce | 1 cup | decanted into a squeeze bottle |
| Heavy-duty foil | 1 roll |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down to coals. You want steady low heat for two hours, not flames.
- Lay out a double layer of heavy foil per half-slab. Spread the onion slices down the middle as a bed.
- Rub the ribs all over with the premixed paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, and salt. Set them on the onions, meat side up.
- Pour a couple of ounces of stock or juice into each packet. Fold the foil into a sealed pouch with the seam on top so nothing leaks.
- Set the packets on a grate a good distance above the coals, or directly on the edge of the coal bed. Rotate every 30 minutes. Two to two and a half hours until the meat pulls back from the bone.
- Open the packets carefully, away from your face. Steam burns.
- Brush the ribs with sauce and lay them straight on the grate over the coals for five minutes a side, until the sauce sets and chars in spots.
- Pour off the packet liquid before you pack the foil out.
Ribs are a time problem, not a technique problem. The connective tissue needs a couple of hours of low moist heat before it gives up, and a sealed foil packet does that job over coals the same way a slow cooker does it on a counter. The onion bed matters: it lifts the meat off the hot foil so the bottom braises instead of scorching, and the half cup of liquid turns to steam and stays trapped.
This is a cooler recipe, not a pack recipe — raw pork rides on ice and gets cooked the first night. The rub is the part worth doing at home. Five spices measured into one jar means you are shaking a jar at camp instead of opening five bags in the wind. Sauce goes on at the very end only, over direct heat; put it on early and the sugar burns black long before the meat is done.
Packing
Mix the five rub spices into one small jar at home and slice the onion into a bag. Ribs go in the cooler in a leakproof bag, bottom layer, against the ice. Sauce moves to a squeeze bottle so you are not carrying a glass jar.
Variations
- No grate: skip the sear and reduce the sauce in a pan, then pour it over the opened packet.
- Dutch oven instead of foil — onions on the bottom, ribs coiled on their side, lid on, coals on top.
- Orange juice instead of stock makes the sauce read sweeter; beer makes it read darker.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/slow-cooker-ribs