Why the 5-1-0 method is hands down one of the worst for pork ribs

It feels like everyone who's ever set foot in a kitchen is now sharing cooking hacks on TikTok, and one way to get a tip to go viral seems to be to append a numerical mnemonic to it. Hence, we have the 5-6-7 rule for burger cooking, the 3-3-2-2 tip for steak searing, and the 3-2-1 method for tender pork ribs. A sequence of digits may appear to be a scientific formula that will guarantee best results, but this isn't always the case. Scott Thomas, owner of The Grillin' Fools, rails against something called the 5-1-0 method, which is also applied to pork ribs.

The 5-1-0 method involves smoking the ribs for five hours, then wrapping them in foil and cooking them for another hour. (The final digit should technically be 0.25 since you're supposed to rest the ribs for a quarter of an hour, but a zero on its own makes for better symmetry.) This is in contrast to the aforementioned 3-2-1 method, where the ribs cook naked for three hours, foil-wrapped for two, and then shed the wrapping for the final hour.

Either way, the ribs are on the smoker for six hours, which Scott thinks is just too much. He also points out this fallacy, saying, "I think this 5-1-0 method is ridiculous. The main argument is that the 3-2-1 method overcooks the ribs. But then it's talking about cooking the ribs for the same amount of time at the same temps, which will overcook the ribs."

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Pork ribs don't need 6 hours of cooking time

Scott Thomas elaborated on why the 5-1-0 method really isn't an improvement on the 3-2-1 technique. "Sure, it's only an hour in the foil, which steams the ribs in their own juices and hyper-accelerates the breakdown of the connective tissues," he said, adding that cooking ribs this way doesn't do anything to avoid overcooking. Instead, "... they should cut that five-hour cook in half, at least," he explained.

If you insist on a partially wrapped cooking method with a numerical descriptor, he suggests 90-60-30 instead. Those numbers, of course, refer to minutes of cooking time, not hours, because three hours of smoking will get your ribs to the USDA-recommended internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit without drying them out.

Thomas himself, however, favors an even simpler cooking technique that can be described with just a single digit. "Take the ribs off at four hours, no wrap, and serve them," he said. So there you have it, straight from a pit master: the "4" method. There's no need for foil, different steps, or counting up or down. Just meat, seasonings, and a smoker are all that's required for perfect pork ribs.

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