Perfect and Easy Prime Rib

Making Prime Rib that beats the steakhouse is easy and only involves a few steps. Once you follow the formula then you will have the Lodge House experience every time.

Rubs that work the best

Best: Prime Rib - Most traditional

Also Great: Kansas City, Steakhouse (Sugar free), Santa Maria, Dallas (Spicy). All these will be sure fire hits, but the Prime Rib rub is made for this cut.

Steps:

1- Rub the meat down.

Put a lot of the rub on your prime or roast. You need about 2 x what you think should go on. For full flavor let the meat set with the rub for 2 days before cooking (overnight or all day will work but the flavor wont be as developed).

On a big prime rib the flavor will get to the center by the 2nd day. The bigger the roast the thicker the coating.  This is a prime that I ate.

2 - Select a good cut

The picture above was an excellent Prime. note that there is still a cat cap on the outside. you want that. don't cut it off. Look at the red part there should be veins of white. If you have a lot of white streaks then you have good marbling. Ignore a cut that has solid red. Tht's some old dairy cow and its going to be tough. Leave that one for the dollar store.

The Weight is Key

The rest of the process is calculations based on the weight, so don't throw the package away with the weight on it.

Phase 1 - Prepping

1) Let the meat come up to room temperature. This could take 1-2 hrs depending on the weight. a. After 1 hr I usually start preheating the oven

2) Preheat oven to 500F for 30 min – 1hr .

By now your meat should be up to room temp

b. Put the meat on a rack in a pan like a cookie sheet. I line it with tin foil so the clean up is easy.

c. Put the meat on the rack. If it’s a prime rib then the rib bones should be down and the fat side up. It's VERY important not to lay your roast on the pan or it will boil and basically make roast beef. You need the rack to get air circulation around it.

Phase 2 - Putting the meat in the oven

1) Put the meat in the oven and immediately drop to 475. After this point do not open the oven door until the waiting time is done or you will lose a lot of your heat.

Cook time for phase 2:

475F @ 7 min/ Lb

so 2.7lb rib = 19 min

Phase 3 - Turn the oven off and wait

Turn oven off and don’t open the door until the times up. Yes, turn the oven off and make sure the door stays closed the entire time.

50 min/Lb

So a 2.7 lb prime would be 135 min

a 9 Lb roast would be 450 Min or 7.5 hrs

I just use the timer on my cell phone. At the end the meat will be perfectly medium rare, fully rested and ready to start slicing.

If it's still hot let it cool until just warm, that way all the juice stays in the meat.

You will now have a fully developed prime rib with a nice bark that will rival an expensive steak house.

One Last thing - Carving

I start from the right side, so slice off the overcooked outside until you see a pink wall like in a pro steakhouse, but don't throw that meat away. That is super valuable! 

Since you have to heavily season the roast to get it flavored up you don't want to eat that on the steak as it will be over seasoned, so that's why you have to cut it off.

You can put it in a chili, a stew or a soup and it will be very profound but I use it for breakfast.

Bishops Hash

I sliced it up into bite sized pieces and cooked fried potatoes with onions and mushrooms and a little more spice on the potatoes and then towards the end I threw the end cap pieces in with it and then a couple eggs on top. Its hard to tell if the prime rib or the breakfast was better. But I didn't have to choose since I had both.

In this pic I added bacon... Because... Bacon.

The great thing...

The great thing about this formula is that you know long long its going to take and it gives you plenty of time to make sides, etc.  Bonus pro tip: Make a lot of your sides the day before.