Holiday Prime Rib

I’ve been doing pretty well almost exclusively making vegetarian dishes for the better part of two months, but it’s getting into the holiday season and it wouldn’t be the same without at least a couple meals featuring meat. I learned that my Halloween chili doesn’t work as vegetarian chili, but I have no delusions as to Thanksgiving or Christmas meals; they will be centered around meat. The tentative plan is prime rib for Thanksgiving (I am perfectly happy not eating turkey all year) and lamb for Christmas.

For Thanksgiving, I’m going to use Meathead’s recipe targeting the grill. I’ve made this before and it was awesome. I’m kicking myself for not writing it down when I did it then, so I’m trying to fix that now.

Some thoughts as I write this while reading the article. Mostly, “don’t forget to do these steps”:

• Start Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow Crust rub at least an hour before putting the meat on the grill. Maybe let this be the start of the process, before even loading up the grill with charcoal. Don’t forget the optional prepared horseradish. I used it last time and liked it.
• Cut off the ribs and throw them in the gravy (as the recipe instructs)? Allows forming the meat into more of a cylinder and removes an insulator on 1/3rd of the meat, both helping promote more even cooking. Further, it allows a nice crispy crust to develop on all sides. The main downside I can see is that it won’t allow a particular person in my house, who loves to eat the ribs, to have nicely browned and crispy ribs. I still think the bones removed from the gravy will taste good and the tradeoff of having a great gravy for the potatoes should compensate?
  • Brown the bones before roasting. Put in oven at 325°F until they’re “brown on the outside.”
  • I think I prefer the, “put all the gravy ingredients into a pan and put it under the roast while it cooks in order to catch the smoky drippings” option.
• Smoke or no? “I cannot overemphasize this. This cut of meat does not benefit from a lot of smoke. Keep it in the background.”
• Make Meathead’s Buttery Garlic Mashed Potatoes? “And you should make my Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Yes you really should.”

Conclusion

Awesome. Damn near perfect.

Last time I made this, the crust was a little spicy. For whatever reason, it wasn’t this time. While I like spice, for a prime rib and gentler tastes, I think it’s generally better that it turned out the way it did.

Regarding various bullets above (in bullet order):

Re: rib bones: The rib bones were removed prior to cooking as instructed. This did not seem to negatively affect the enjoyment of said ribs by the rib lover and its contribution to an even cook and increased crust means it was a win all around as far as I’m concerned.

sub-Re: bones in the gravy: I did put all the gravy ingredients into the pan under the roast while it cooked. This led to a damn fine gravy. I will say that my family and I have become accustomed to damn fine gravy, so it didn’t stick out too much in a positive way; it was just the excellence we expect when you puree the right mix of braised vegetables with a broth consisting at least partially of the drippings from an excellent roast.

Re: smoke: I put a chunk of hickory(?) in the grill while it cooked. Probably 3 – 4 oz.

Re: mashed potatoes: We didn’t exactly make the mashed potatoes because it’s basically what we make anyway, so we just did that.