Bingo. You know how when you make broth (or stock with meaty bones) how the meat the liquid becomes flavorful, tasting like the meat you’re cooking it in, but the meat becomes a flavorless lump of protein, as it’s given all its flavor to the broth? Well that’s what happens when you boil ribs. You’re leeching all the pork flavor OUT of the meat, and then serving this flavorless gelatinous fall-off-the-bone goo as food. I would be more interested in saving the pork broth that you’ve made and eating that rather than the boiled ribs.
Boiling removes much of the natural flavor in any meat, unless you’re using a highly flavored liquid.
I live in the Dallas area, and when I want ribs I always go to a place called Red, Hot and Blue, which is the only joint I’ve ever been to that does Memphis-style dry rub ribs. They sell by the rack or half-rack. I’m not sure what the deal is at other joints, because when we go other places like Dickey’s or Sonny Bryans’, we’re usually not looking for ribs.
I rarely make ribs, but when I make similar grill meats I will often start them in a medium oven (delicate meat like chicken legs and breasts, to ensure they’re fully cooked) or, for tougher cuts, on a raised rack in a closed oven pan with some water to steam it mostly-cooked. I haven’t detected any loss of flavor from the latter technique, and I just don’t have 4-6 hours to screw around with meat on the grill.
(As a very accomplished home cook who fed a family of 8 for many years, I pride myself on my kitchen skills, and never felt the need to go out on the back porch to use inferior tools and techniques to prove my manliness. Still don’t really get the point of doing such things the hardest, smelliest, messiest, least-convenient way just to avoid “cooking.” Whiile a good grill is an asset, creating an entirely duplicated Real Man Kitchen 20 feet from the real thing just boggles me.)
Because it tastes different, Amateur. We’ve been through this before. Roasting something in the oven doesn’t taste the same as grilling it or smoking it over wood. If it makes no difference for you, that’s fine. Not everyone cares. Most probably don’t care. But I do. Just look at the thread we just had about 'cuing bottom round.
If I’m barbecuing, I am not above finishing my meat in the oven. But it will always start in the smoker to get infused with the smokiness, and then finish in the oven. It’s not “manliness” (although there is a sense of self-satisfaction in cooking out in the open. For me, it’s fun. It’s an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy the outdoors doing something I love.) It’s taste. If I want to barbecue or grill, I want it precisely because I want those flavors. It’s not like I don’t roast stuff in the oven or stovetop all the time–that’s 95% of my cooking. But when I’m in the mood for barbecue or grilling, it’s exactly those flavors I’m in the mood for and, no, boiling ribs or braising them does not come anywhere near the flavor I am craving when I want barbecue/grilled foods.
Barbecue came out of the tradition of manly men setting up the smoke pit (sometimes buried like a luau pit) going off to work for the day, and coming back to a hot supper. It was a great coincidence the cheapest cuts benefited most from this low and slow method. One can still set up a smoker today that can barbecue all day long and maintenance free - it need not even be gadgety like a Bradley Smoker that automatically loads compressed wood pucks into the smoker. Look at the Weber Smokey Mountain Minion Method. You set that up and go to sleep or go to work. It’s the same principles workers in the Carolinas used with their old BBQ pits. Smokers don’t need babysat. Only some designs require that.
You can’t duplicate the smoke, chew, texture, and succulence of authentic barbecue any other way. People that think you can are the ones that like dumping a bottle of Kraft BBQ sauce on crockpotted meat and thinking that = barbecue. It doesn’t even take work, just time, and it doesn’t really even take that because it’s not hands on time.
Exactly. When I got married, I threw a brisket in the smoker in the morning before getting dressed and going off to church. After our late morning ceremony and luncheon reception, we came back to our place at around 5 p.m. or so for an after party. Brisket was completely unattended and was finished by the time I got home. The whole thing went in a half hour–I’m not even sure I had a chance to even have any except for the bits I had slicing it.
Normally, I’d fiddle around with it slightly more–probably throwing in another load of coals and wood and flipping it midway through the process, but one load and left alone for 9-10 hours on a Weber Smokey Mountain worked well enough.
It only becomes fiddly when you have an inefficient smoker that you have to feed every so often. A few years ago a friend of mine and me built a smoker out of cinderblocks to barbecue 6 Boston butts, about 20 pounds of hot links, and two packer cuts of brisket. This thing was ugly and it ate wood like nobody’s business. Every 30-40 minutes or so we had to go out there and throw two or three quarter splits into the firebox to keep it going. Horribly inefficient. But it worked and made some damned good cue.
Face it, gentlemen: Most American males do not enjoy cooking unless it is physically dangerous. 
I tend to agree with AB that there is a certain group of people who place way too much emphasis on doing everything on the grill, but that doesn’t mean the grill/smoker doesn’t have its place. Most obviously in adding smokiness to the flavor.
Well, that’s the main purpose for it, as far as I’m concerned. Purpose #2 would be convenience (like you’re at a campground, a park, etc. where it’s the easiest way to heat up some food.) Around here, nobody grills everything. It’s a once a week thing at most in the summer for most people, more like once a month. I don’t think there’s anybody on this board who falls under the “do everything on the grill,” and I’ve never met such a person in real life. In other words, I think it’s a bit of a straw man.
Oh boy. There are a couple kinds:
- “I’m a guy and I don’t know how/am ashamed to use an oven.”
1b) “I just got my new grill and can cook anything on it!” (Especially common with new Big Green Egg owners.)
- BBQ Mafia: No cut that is traditioanlly used for barbecue can be cooked anywhere other than on the smoker.
They aren’t a huge presence. They’re probably more common in the South where Q is a religion and weather allows for year-round grilling. They’re also a little easier to find on the internet. Regardless, I’m happy any time someone takes an interest in cooking, even if their enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of them.
I suppose I could understand the over-enthusiasm of a Big Green Egg owner. I’d probably be cooking everything on that, too, for the first couples months. 
In regards to #2, I haven’t come across that. What I have come across (and somewhat am irritated by myself) is when something is labeled as “barbecue” at a restaurant I could reasonably expect would serve barbecue, but it is not (like boiled ribs drowned in barbecue sauce, for instance.) That irritates me a bit, so I’ve just gotten to never ordering anything that says “barbecue” on it in any restaurant unless I know in advance it is barbecue, or if I’m in the mood for wet meat slopped in barbecue sauce (which I almost never am.)
Oh yeah. I call it the honeymoon stage. Some folks will light that thing up for hot dogs, until a year or two goes by. Then they gradually start firing up the gas grill again. I know I did.
I’m with you. If it’s labeled as such, it should be real barbecue. Some folks just take it a step further. Cooking ribs in the oven isn’t cheating if you’re going for a differnt style. (I know you don’t think it is.)
Gas grill? What’s that? 
Yeah, I’ll braise ribs occasionally, but it’s a different thing I’m going for when I do that. It’s usually beef short ribs or sometimes beef back ribs, but I have braised pork spares before. But I turn that into a stewy kind of thing. Definitely fall/winter type of food as opposed to the more “summery” grilling and barbecuing (although I’ll grill and barbecue in the winter, too, of course.)
I also use the oven to roast ribs that I’m going to serve asian style. My family likes me to get them going in the oven and finish on the grill at the beach every year. We don’t have a smoker there.
It’s what you cook hotdogs and hamburgers on. Real meat goes in a smoker. Steaks being the exception.
I can think of a lot of meat that I don’t regularly cook on a smoker.
That was mostly in jest.
My bad.
Try Bakers ribs in Deep Ellum.