How to Cook Elk Ribs Recipe

Learn how to cook elk ribs with this elk rib recipe that makes tender, super meaty ribs, sure to cause some serious finger licking.

These savory Pressure Cooker Ribs will make you a star in the kitchen with whoever is lucky enough to share them with you. In my case, the lucky beneficiary was my wife Melissa when I made these elk ribs for us to share on the night of our 14th wedding anniversary.

I appreciate the fact that I am so extremely blessed to be married to a woman who loves eating the wild game I bring home from the many hunting trips that keep me away from our family for weeks at a time every fall. But being a full-time wild game chef and recipe developer allows my wife and our 10-year-old daughter to play an integral part in my food blogging business. They are my recipe testers. They are the ones who taste everything you see here on the website and tell me whether or not it's good enough to publish and share with you. These ladies are my biggest fans, but also my biggest critics. So you can trust that all of my recipes, especially these pressure cooker ribs, are absolutely delicious, and well worth a try.

How To Trim Ribs

Before we add the dry rub, we want to rinse the elk ribs and pat them dry with a paper towel. Then you need to trim the ribs and remove the membrane from the back of the bones. This is easiest to remove with a paper towel. Just use a sharp knife to lift one of the corners of the membrane, then grab it with the paper towel and pull – it might just come off if you are lucky. But I rarely find it's as easy as everyone else says it is. If you are like me and the paper towel trick doesn't work, you can use the same sharp knife to trim the waxy fat off the bone side, and to trim the silver skin off of the meaty side of the ribs.

How To Cook Elk Ribs

You can't just throw elk ribs in the smoker for a few hours like you would some baby back pork ribs and hope for a good outcome. If you've already tried it this way, you most likely ended up with a mouthful of chewy, waxy venison meat that was extremely disappointing after all the extra work you put in to salvage the elk ribs and pack them out of the field.

You have to treat venison ribs different. They take a long time to get tender. That's why most other good venison rib recipes call for you to put them in a slow cooker for about 4 hours before finishing them off on the grill. But most people work all day, and if you put the ribs in the slow cooker in the morning, they'll be overcooked and have fallen completely off the bone by the time you get home in the evening.

Plenty of people think that “fall off the bone” is the hallmark of perfectly cooked ribs. However, barbecue aficionados (and judges) consider this to be overcooked. A perfect rib should be tender but still have the meat intact on the bone.  That's why I developed this electric pressure cooker ribs recipe. The pressure cooker cuts the cook time down to just 1 hour, making it much easier to prepare on a weeknight after you get home from work. The pressure cooker locks in moisture and makes the ribs tender, but not mushy, in just a fraction of the time.

Rib Dry Rub Recipe

To start your elk ribs off right, cover them generously with this rib dry rub recipe.

This rib dry rub recipe uses seasonings that most of us already have in our pantry. Things like salt, black pepper, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and chili powder to give the elk ribs loads of flavor.

If you want to make the ribs spicier, feel free to add a ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper to the mix.

Liquid Smoke For Ribs

Using liquid smoke for ribs is a great way to add that amazing smoky mesquite flavor. Please don’t skip the liquid smoke! Because we are cooking the ribs quickly in a pressure cooker, the liquid smoke provides that smoky flavor that you’d typically only get by cooking them low and slow in a smoker.

How Long To Cook Ribs In Pressure Cooker

After lots of experimentation, I finally learned how long to cook ribs in a pressure cooker. Remember that we need to treat these elk ribs differently than pork ribs. For this pressure cooker rib recipe, it will take 40 minutes on high pressure + complete natural release. Do not vent the elk ribs immediately. Because the elk meat is tougher, it needs the full natural release to become tender.

Broiled Ribs

After the elk ribs are finished cooking in the pressure cooker, I like to brush them with BBQ sauce and place them in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes. The broiled ribs are slightly crispy on top, and the sauce becomes extra thick and amazingly delicious.

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