EVERYONE knows the barbecue mantra “low and slow:” cook tough cuts of meat over low indirect heat for hours and hours until they fall off the bone and melt in the mouth.

I thought that was about all there was to it. Then I tried several recent recipes from acknowledged masters of the grill, and got dry, chewy spareribs. I took a closer look under the grill lid, and what I saw leads me to offer some fairly heterodox advice for barbecuing ribs:

Don’t try this at home.

To be precise, don’t cook ribs for more than a couple of people on a standard-size domestic grill. It’s a simple matter of real estate. Home grills work reasonably well for slow-cooking compact cuts like the shoulder, but they can be too cramped for flat cuts that take up a lot of surface area. There’s not enough room for large amounts of meat to keep a comfortable distance from the high direct heat of the gas flames or coals.

It takes about five pounds of ribs to feed four people generously. That turns out to be a couple hundred square inches of ribs.

My starter-model gas grill is about 275 square inches, with heating elements running along the long sides. Ribs for four cover most of the grill surface, and some of them lie directly over the heating element.