Slow Cooker Ribs
Slow cooker ribs are the best, most tender, flavorful ribs you’ll make! These are just about the easiest thing in the world and the meat just falls right off the bone!
My husband is straight up obsessed with pork.
The man would eat it for every meal if I weren’t around to shove beef, chicken, and a stray vegetable or two at him every now and then.
Man cannot live on bacon alone, my dear husband.But, still, he tries.
Anyway, I’ve come up with some crazy amazing pork deliciousness over the years. My pulled pork is literally the best thing ever. I make it almost every time we have a big family get together, because not only does everyone love it, it’s easy.
Today I’m here with something porky, but different!
Crock pot ribs! Y’all are going to flip for how simple this one is.
My slow cooker ribs recipe starts with a homemade dry rub. You can use a store-bought version if you must, but I swear, my bbq rub is AMAZING and you really don’t want to miss out. 😉
How to make crock pot ribs:
This is the easy part, friends.
You literally just coat the ribs in my homemade BBQ dry rub.
The dry rub consists of brown sugar, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and parsley. Super easy stuff that you probably have in your cupboards.
Sprinkle that over your ribs and rub it all in on both sides.
Add some apple cider (or apple juice!) to your slow cooker, pop the ribs in, cover, and cook!
Every slow cooker heats differently, but mine takes 4 hours on high and 8 hours on low. If your crockpot cooks hotter, you can reduce the same as needed.
These slow cooker pork ribs get pulled out and popped on a baking sheet. Slather them in my Carolina BBQ sauce and then pop them under the broiler for a couple of minutes.
Once the barbecue sauce starts to caramelize, your ribs are ready!
These are seriously best slow cooker ribs!!
What to serve with crock pot pork ribs:
Oh goodness, there are so many tasty possibilities!
We always have my coleslaw recipe with ribs.
Jiffy corn casserole is a definite hit.
Cowboy beans, cauliflower potato salad, and crockpot hashbrown casserole are all amazing as well.
More crockpot recipes:
If you love using that crockpot to make dinner time easy, I have some tasty recipes you should try!
My French dip sandwich is the most popular recipe on this site!
Crockpot BBQ chicken, crockpot pork roast, and crockpot chicken and stuffing are on repeat at my house month after month.
Serve these ribs with some cucumber tomato salad and crockpot mashed potatoes!
Slow Cooker Ribs
These crockpot BBQ ribs are super simple and ready in no time! Toss them in your slow cooker and then baste with sauce before broiling to perfection.
Ingredients
- 3 racks baby back ribs
- 2 tablespoons paprika
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon parsley
- 1/2 cup apple cider
- 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
Instructions
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Remove the membrane from the back of the ribs and cut each rack of ribs in half so that they fit easily in the slow cooker.
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In a small bowl, whisk together the paprika, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and parsley.
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Sprinkle the dry rub over each side of the ribs and use your hands to press it into the meat.
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Add the apple cider to the bottom of a slow cooker and place the ribs in the slow cooker.
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Cook, covered, on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours.
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When ribs are nearly falling apart, carefully remove them from the slow cooker to a large baking sheet. Brush with barbecue sauce.
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Place under the broiler until the sauce has thickened and begun to caramelize, about 5 minutes.
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Serve immediately.
Nutrition Disclaimer: All information presented on this site is intended for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and any nutritional information shared on bunsinmyoven.com should only be used as a general guideline.
Can you place them on a grill instead of a broiler?
I’m sure you could! Great idea.
Oh my goodness!! SLow cooker baby back ribs – I love it!! With the eating machine (aka my son) comes home for the summer this weekend – this recipe is going on my list to make ASAP – those ribs look fabulous!!
Thanks, Nancy!
This is my kind of recipe! The dry rub has such amazing flavors and you cannot beat using the slow cooker to do the heavy lifting. Love it, pinned!
I love ribs, but I’ve never made them at home. This recipe looks so good and definitely do-able! I’ll have to try it out! Thanks 🙂
I love ribs and these look so good. I have never tried them in the slow cooker. I’m going to have to try these ribs.
They are in the Crock-Pot now! Can’t wait! Just out of curiosity…why apple cider vinegar? Does it add flavor sitting in the bottom?
Hi Brooke! You add apple cider, not apple cider vinegar! And it does add flavor. I’d try to dump the vinegar if you can…those ribs might be a bit tangy otherwise.
OMG! I made the same mistake! I just dumped the apple cider vinegar out after about 1/2 hr in the crock pot. I didn’t have cider so I replaced it with beef bouillon.
I’m so glad I came back to this site to read the reviews!
I’m hoping for the best outcome.
I’ll make note after they are ready to eat.
Ooh, good luck! Hope you caught it in time!
These look absolutely delicious!! I can’t wait to try these! Thanks for sharing!
I made the ribs ! They were delicious, but they didn’t need 8 hours, the mest was falling off the bone ?
Hi Liz!
Every slow cooker cooks a bit differently – some run hotter than others. You’ll know to adjust for next time. 🙂
I really want to try this recipe but I’m doing only 2 pounds of spare ribs. How long on low would you suggest I do them for?
I think it will likely take a similar amount of time. Maybe an hour less, if that.
I used to do my ribs this way .. 4 hurs and so yummy, but discivered a new way this year …. ans a lot quicker.
Use an electronic pressure cooker… dry rub in the pot with a little liquid at the bottom and 20 minutes at pressure and they are equiva;lent to 4 hours in warm oven or slow cooker… Ribs on the table in an hour or less
Thomas Chandler – pressure cooker version sounds like a brilliant variation! Thanks for sharing the tip.
I tried that and want to tell you that it was so delicious that i tried that 3 days regularly 🙂
Can I make this with non-baby-back ribs, such as pork country spare ribs?
I think that would work fine, though I haven’t tried it myself.
Hi I had to try your recipe and I use them on my country ribs and OMG! so tender, as I was taking them out of crock pot to broil them most of the bones fell off in the pot. I didn’t have apple cider so I used orange juice and cook them on low for 7 hours great flavor, thanks…
I am a die hard charcoal griller, but you have never let me down so I am going to give this a try, I will let you know.
Thanks Karly
Maggie
Well they do look spectacular! I need to use my slow cooker more often! This is genius!
Do you lay the ribs down in the crock pot or stand them up in the cider?
Just pile them all in there. You can see how I did it in the video in this post.
Is it just apple cider or apple cider vinegar??
Apple cider! That’d be an awful lot of vinegar in there. 🙂
how much liquid to I use – please be specific. It says apple cider vinegar in the recipe. How much. I always have that around. I don’t want to buy a whole bottle of apple cider if I’m only going to use a little bit. Thanks! My husband loves ribs, but I said I didn’t know how to make them, so I want to try this as it looks so easy. We like fall off the bone ribs, not the chewy ones where you have to gnaw on the bone
The amounts are all located within the recipe card. I would not use apple cider vinegar for this recipe.
Made these tonight! They were awesome! Best… Easiest ribs ever! Thank you!
So glad you gave them a try!
I made these ribs and they were so frickin good!!!! I am just curious but how much degrees do you broil these bad boys at?
I use a gas oven which doesn’t have a temperature setting for the broiler. Flames just come out of the broiler. I would guess around 500 degrees though? Just keep a close eye on them.
I add 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar to the apple cider…. perfect
also make your baked potatoes in the crock pot in a line while ribs cook I stand the ribs on the side and baked potato’s in a liner in the middle
Would like to know if apple juice can be used instead, will make this by the end of the week.
Apple juice works just fine! 🙂 Enjoy!
I’m not sure why, but I read apple cider as apple cider vinegar when I made this recipe last night ; despite my mistake, absolutely delicious. Saving this recipe for future uses!
I did the same….not a fan at all. I should read it twice. Waste of ribs.
I’m sure they weren’t all that great with the vinegar. If you try again, be sure to use apple cider. 🙂
Uh oh! I bet those were some tangy ribs. I’m sure they’ll be even better with apple cider. 🙂
Crap mine are in crockpot with apple cider vinegar too! Hope they are still good…
Uh oh! I hope it still works out for you!
This recipe is nasty, the only thing giving it any flavor at all was the bbq sauce…We are used to smoking our ribs, but since it was cold, I tried this recipe…I think if you use an good rub and let it soak in for 24 hours, it might turn out better, I will never cook my ribs any other way besides smoking them, it’s the best way. The ribs were falling off the bone and soft though.
You can’t expect the same flavor of a slow cooker rib that you would from a smoked rib. They’re obviously going to taste pretty different.
Ummmm NOTHING will taste the same as smoked meat?
Use some liquid smoke!!!!!!
do you use dried parsley or fresh?…im using fresh so i hope thats ok
Either should be fine, but I use dried in things like rubs and spice blends. 🙂
Love Love Love bar-b que ribs will make this very soon thanks for the recipe and others as well
I improvised since I didn’t have either apple cider or apple juice. So instead I used cinnamon apple sauce : )
HOW many pounds of meat does the rub cover? I’m about to try this recipe! Yay!!!
Hi Britt! This should easily cover the 3 racks of ribs. If you have extra, just store it in a sealed container for next time. 🙂
Can u use beef ribs instead of pork?
I haven’t tried it, but I think it’d work fine.
Is the BBQ sauce necessary or can I broil without the sauce? My boyfriend and i arent the biggest fans of BBQ sauce.
I always leave one or two of them plain for my husband and it works fine! 🙂
Oh no! I’m doing this now and realized I grabbed apple juice instead of cider. Should I skip it or use the juice instead?
Also I’m only doing 1 rack cuz there’s only 2 of us at home. How do I adjust the cooking time? Thank u.
Apple juice and apple cider are basically the same thing…won’t hurt anything to use the juice. For the cook time, I’m really not sure how it will change. Should be a bit less time, so just keep an eye on them.
I tried this last night and I must say it is one recipe that stands true! Although I didn’t need the full 8 hours either, they fell off the bone & the flavor was great. Loved the caramelization process for the final touch. It was a hit with hubby…and he’s very picky!!! Meal was complete w/ Mac n cheese, baked beans & coleslaw. Thanks!
So glad they were hubby approved! 🙂
I am not a rib cooker and I will tell you these turned out wonderful. Planning to use this recipe again!! And share like crazy.
Thank goodness for google. I googled crockpot ribs. This one came up and at 415am it looked like a winner. My ribs went in the crockpot frozen. No problem. The meat fell off the bone. My first tine using the broil setting in an oven too.
Thank you for the recipe.
So glad you gave them a try! 🙂
Do you need to take the “skin” off as you are supposed to do when you grill ribs?
Yep!
Made these yesterday, they were great! Didn’t have apple cider or apple juice so I used half a bottle of flat coke I have in my fridge. Worked perfect! Loved the rub, will use again for sure.
Great swap!! So glad you enjoyed the recipe.
Like so many others I made the mistake of using Apple cider vinegar ?????They have 20 minutes left in the slow cooker so I guess there is no changing it up now. Just hoping they aren’t terrible
Uh oh! I hope they turn out.