Former Vegetarian’s First Attempt At Cooking Prime Rib

In case you are wondering why it’s taken me so long to make a standing rib roast for the first time, once upon a time I was a vegetarian. It didn’t make much sense considering how much I loved a juicy rare steak, but I sacrificed my meat-eating ways to be in synch with my boyfriend. Ah, the things we do for love! The relationship ended about the time I graduated from college and so did my vegetarian eating habits.

Fast forward a few years to find me playing in a wedding band. (Back in the day, DJs were seldom hired to play music at a wedding because it would have been regarded as cheap.) As an experienced and in-demand wedding band we played over 100 gigs a year, and almost every one of them served prime rib for dinner. Multiplied by the 5 years I was in the band and you’ve got serious prime rib burn-out.

So you can understand why it’s taken me 25 years to become interested enough in prime rib to attempt cooking it myself. Not only will I be roasting a standing rib roast for the first time, it will be the inaugural use of our new convection oven as well and I’m hoping I don’t ruin a $40 piece of meat.

Following the basic instructions from How Stuff Works, I start by taking the meat out of the refrigerator about 2 hours ahead of cooking.

At cooking time, pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees and while it’s heating, prep the meat. I poured some Worcestershire sauce on it and rubbed in Montreal seasoning mix.

The rib roast came with a pop-up thermometer that I ignored and instead used two of my own. The Frigidaire oven has a probe that I’m using for the first time and I’ll back it up with the Maverick digital probe that we’ve been using for several years. We set the thermometers to beep at 115 degrees.

Put the roast in the oven, fatty side up, ribs on the bottom. You’ll see the fat start to crackle and crisp. After 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 325 degrees. At this point I digressed from the instructions and opened the oven door for a minute to let the extreme heat escape and the temperature lower to 325.

When the internal temperature of the roast reached 115 degrees, we took it out of the oven and tented it with foil for 20 minutes, keeping the probe in place. The interior of the meat cooks another few degrees while it’s resting.

The butcher had removed the meat from the rib and tied it back. After cooking, all we had to do was remove the string and take the meat off the bone for carving in ½ inch slices. Two ribs yielded four generous, perfectly cut servings plus some scraps. Later in the week, the scraps and meat I trimmed off the bones were cut into bite-sized pieces and served with brown gravy over toast. Nothing goes to waste around here!

Prime rib au jus served with baby brussels sprouts and rice with black beans paired with One Hope Cabernet Sauvignon.