The claim: With the new Ribalizer Rib Cooker, you can skip the messy hassle of boiling, baking or all-day smoking and still get those tender, smoky ribs you crave. You can cook up to six racks of ribs for a big group or just one or two racks for the family. There's easy cleanup: The metal Ribalizer rack and meat separator are durable and dishwasher safe, while the pans are disposable. After cooking, just toss out the bottom pan with drippings and liquid. Rinse and reuse the top pan if you like. Four pans are included.
Cost: $29.95
Where: ribalizer.com
I like it when a product exceeds my expectations, and this one did it with flying colors.
The Ribalizer is pretty easy to set up and use in a grill. The two-hour grill time surprised me, but the time was perfect. The meat came right off the bone with a fork. I used just the seasonings that came with the Ribalizer, and the ribs were delicious.
I'm not convinced that you can do six rib racks at one time, as the marketing for the product says, but I would think four is easily doable. I'm curious as to whether this would work in an oven indoors during winter.
Honestly, you'd probably be able to rig up a similar contraption on your own with some metal racks and large aluminum foil pans. But I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this. It's well worth the price.
T hey claim: “The best ribs you'll ever cook.” Hardly.
Anyone who has smoked or barbecued ribs and knows even a little bit about it can produce tender, tasty ribs without spending $30 on a stainless-steel rack and some disposable aluminum pans, which is what you get when you buy the Ribalizer.
The company also sells rib rub, which you can easily make to your own tastes with ingredients like chile pepper, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper, garlic powder and onion powder, plus some brown sugar.
You get aluminum pans and a rack, which hold up to six racks of ribs vertically, side-by-side. If your gas grill is big enough — many aren't — you can smoke the ribs with wood chips in the grill with the Ribalizer uncovered, then top the gizmo with another aluminum pan and steam them until they're tender. But you can get the same results using your oven, your grill and/or your smoker, and you won't have to keep buying aluminum pans from the company. (I couldn't find any the same size at Giant Eagle, so once you buy the Ribalizer, you have to buy the pans online from the company, it appears.)
Best thing about it is that you can cook multiple racks of ribs in one device. The ribs were OK, but no one needs the hassle or the expense of the Ribalizer to get great results.
M y husband cooks ribs from time to time. Those are the nights when I might take a long detour through a drive-through on my way home from work. It is not easy for the average person to cook mouth-watering ribs at home. So, I was curious when the opportunity came to test the Ribalizer.
The Ribalizer is a rack system that suspends up to six slabs of ribs during cooking on a grill. It is simple to put together and uses disposable aluminum pans that can be easily replaced. The Ribalizer doesn't make the job of preparing ribs any less messy, and depending on how one normally cooks ribs, it might save some time. What it does very well, though, is produce delicious ribs. Even a rib-cooking novice could tackle this and get great results.
The kit comes with a package of rub; my husband and I didn't know this and made our own. We also needed to purchase wood chips for the smoking phase of the cooking process, and the instructions offer suggestions — soda, beer, water — for liquids that could be used in the bottom of the pan. This became a little bit of an investment, but it was worth every penny. The resulting restaurant-worthy ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender and had a great smoked flavor. Cleanup was easy — just pitch the pan and put the rack in the dishwasher — and we learned a few new barbecue tricks along the way.
I'm a fan.
