prime rib with horseradish sauce
serious eats
Jackson was very excited to find a whole rib roast on sale at stop and shop for $8.99/lb. With help from a youtube tutorial, we carved the roast and consumed parts of it in the following formats:
- rib eye steaks
- beef ribs
- tallow
- prime rib
I didn't have all these cuts, since I'm not as into beef as Jackson, but the whole thing was a thrill to witness.
We had the prime rib for dinner right before leaving town for the holidays, as an early Christmas dinner for just the two of us. We served it with horseradish sauce, German potato salad, and sautéed spinach and onions.
We mainly followed Kenji's guide for prime rib on seriouseats, with a few deviations. Here is a summary of our process. Our roast weighed just shy of 4 pounds, and did not have any ribs on it. (The only reason we cut the ribs out was so that Jackson could try baked beef ribs on their own at a separate dinner.) A day ahead of time, we cut slits into the fat of the roast and covered the whole thing with two tablespoons of kosher salt. We used a reverse-sear method, meaning that we cooked it slowly in a 200o oven until the center of the roast reached a temperature of 125o. In our case, this took three hours. After pulling it out of the oven, we tented the roast in foil and let it rest for an hour or so. We finished it under the broiler for a few minutes to heat it up and char the skin. Throughout the whole cook, the roast stayed rib-side-down, fat-side-up.
The end result was tasty. I am not a huge steak person, but this was nonetheless enjoyable to eat. I especially liked the contrast between the salty, charred skin and the chewy, red center. If we make prime rib again, here are a few things to consider.
- In the future, we will opt to keep the bones on, as most recipes recommend. Apparently, the bones insulate the meat and help it cook even more gently and slowly. And now that Jackson has tried beef ribs and recognizes that they're not very good, he's willing to re-allocate them to the prime ribs.
- We ended up burning some of the skin under the broiler. It still tasted great, but the roast lacked visual appeal because of the burns on top. In the future, we may opt to sear the roast at the hottest temperature we can coax out of our oven on bake. Or if we continue using the broiler, we will be sure to leave at least six inches of space between it and the ribs.
Overall, the prime ribs were a fun Christmas dinner. If ever stop and shop sells rib roast again for $8.99/lb, we will revisit this dish.
As for the horseradish sauce, the flavor was excellent, but there were a few things I didn't like about the recipe. I would have preferred a thicker sauce. To this end, I will halve the amount of heavy cream if I make this again. It also made way more horseradish sauce than we needed. For future reference, a half batch of this recipe should suffice for a 3.5-4 lb roast.