05 March, 2008

Standing Rib Roast (Prime Rib) Recipe

As request, I'm posting the recipe that I use to cook a standing rib roast, which is a prime rib with the bones (the ribs) still attached. After all, everyone knows the sweetest meat is next to the bone.

I am a carnivore. Well, that's not precisely true, I do enjoy vegetables and starches, but a well cooked, or uncooked, piece of flesh is a tough meal to beat. The standing rib roast is not exactly inexpensive, but cooking it at home is much more economical than, say, paying $35 for a 16oz portion out somewhere. Anyway, on to the recipe.

Turn on your oven : 250 F.
Remove your roast from the packaging. Make a note of its weight.
You can do a little bit of trimming at this stage, but not too much. I mean it, leave at least half the fat on there.
Rub it down with olive oil.
Spice it as you see fit. ie:
-Salt & Pepper
-Montreal Steak Seasoning
Place on a rack in a roasting pan. Do Not Cover.
Insert a probe thermometer into the center of the cut, making sure it's not touching any bones.
Put your roast into the oven, and cook until it reaches an internal temperature of 122 F. ***
Remove from oven, cover with foil, shiny side in, and let it rest for At Least 30 minutes. You're waiting for the temp to stop rising. It should stabilize somewhere near 130-132 F. DO NOT REMOVE THERMOMETER!
At this point, you can let the roast sit for up to 2-3 hours, I wouldn't go much further than that.
When you're about 30m away from serving time, remove the foil and pop it into the oven which is at 500 F. for 12-15 minutes. Pay Close attention to it during this time. You want a crust, not a carbonized husk of sadness.
Once your crust is done, remove the roast, let it sit for at least 10 minutes covered with foil.
You are now ready to cut and serve.

There aer a couple important things to note. First, do NOT remove the thermometer until you're ready to start carving. Even then, leave it in if you can. If you remove it at the wrong time, it the resulting puncture into the roast will do its very best to emulate old faithful, spewing forth great gouts of flavorful juices. Those flavorful juices that are supposed to remain in the roast until you have freed them with your diligent mastication.
*** Second, the actual aim point temperature listed above as 122 is a varying number. Treat the aim point temperature as X degrees below you desired final temperature, where X is ~ 1.5 times the weight of your roast in pounds. This number is actually 1-2 times the weight of the roast, but 1.5 is a good generalization.

So here's an example. I want a tasty roast, somewhere around the rare to medium rare boundary (or, another way to put it, I want it a deep pink/light red and warm in the center). This means I want the final temperature to be between 130 and 135 degrees. Now, I need to know how much my roast weights. Let's say that it's a 4-rib roast, and it weighs in at a reasonable 6 pounds. So, I take my 1.5, multiply it by 6, and subtract that number from my final temperature of, say, 133 degrees. That means I get 133-(1.5*6) = 122F.

Funy how it all works out in the end, eh?

So the best way to carve this delectibal delight is as follows. You'll need a long shasp knife, or one of those fancy electric carvers. First, cut along the ribs, so you're separating the large piece of meat from them all at once. To describe it dirrferently, the knife blade will slide along all of the ribs at once as you cut away the meat. Now you should have two pieces. Your ribs, all stuck together, and this large, perfectly cooked loin of beef. The beef loin you may now slice into portions as you see fit. The ribs can either be separated and given to the more feral in your dining group, or frozen/refrigerated for soup/midnight snacks later.


Last. but not least, we have our variations and suggestions, in no particular order. Try one or all of them.

For a more even doneness level throughout, take the roast out of the fridge 2-3 hours before you plan on cooking it. This will start equalizing the temperature throughout, giving a prettier, more even level of doneness throughout the roast.

Before putting olive oil onto the roast, coat it with a bit of liquid smoke.

Dry age the beef prior to cooking. All this entails is putting it into the coldest (bottom rear) part of your fridge for 24-72 hours before cooking. First, remove it from the packaging. Pat it dry. Put it onto a roasting rack in a pan, lightly lay a couple paper towels/couple layers of cheesecloth over it, and then put it in the fridge. Turn it, drain any juice, and replace the towels every 12 hours. This process will make it much more tender and enhance/intensify the flavor. Make sure your refrigerator is below 40 degrees (between 33-38, preferably), otherwise bad thigns could happen.

For a gentler cooking method, use a large terracotta bowl-type planter and water-catching dish for cooking. Place the water-catching dish on the oven rack, put the roasting pan and rack on that, then cover it all with the bowl-shaped planter. The terra cotta piece should be preheated in the oven for 30 minutes prior to this. Cook as normal. This will ameliorate the temperature changes due to your oven cycling on and off and on and off and on and off, acting as a thermal buffer. The terracotta is unnecessary for the crusting stage of cooking, but could still be used if you don't mind playing with 500 degree terracotta pieces. Think of this as shaped pizza stones.


Ok, that's all for now. Happy cooking!

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