We Blind Tasted a Bunch of Smoked Spare Ribs. Here are the Results.

Find out which Central Ohio barbecue joint won us over, plus local food and drink news.

A summertime spare rib taste-off? Someone had to do it (Credit: Bethia Woolf)

Here are the Results of our Spare Ribs Taste-Off

By Andy Dehus

Spare ribs, and their trimmed-down St. Louis rib cousins, are one of the truest tests of barbecue skills that a pit master has to offer. They’re also a hell of a lot of fun to eat.

It was with that in mind that a group of meat loving friends in the food community recently conducted a taste-off, with our goal being to find the best spare ribs Central Ohio has to offer.

Before we get to the results, methodological observations and caveats should be laid plain. Perhaps the biggest is that we only included rib purveyors that we were aware of and interested in including—seven contenders in total—a clear bias and one the comment section is encouraged to chime in on. (We’re not above doing this again if we have to!)

The seven Central Ohio spare rib contenders (Credit: Bethia Woolf)

Furthermore, though our primary emphasis was on the meat itself—its smokiness, seasoning, juiciness, overall flavor and texture—applied saucing/dry rubbing varied greatly in amount, flavor and wetness, which added an additional dimension of subjectivity to our evaluations.

Though the tasting was blind, all of the ribs were pulled from full racks, and significant variations in flavor and texture were observed across some racks but, somewhat curiously, not others. It’s fair to assume that racks with greater consistency naturally benefitted from it.

With that throat clearing out of the way, our seven contenders included: B&K Smokehouse, City Barbeque, Hank’s Texas BBQ, Hoggy’s BBQ & Catering, Ray Ray’s Hog Pit, Smoked on High BBQ and Texas Steele BBQ.

Here’s how they ranked: