Very small prime rib roast

12 years ago

My mother would cook a rib roast for our family of four maybe once a year because it was so expensive. I didn't pay much attention to how she cooked it. I think she put it on a rack and cooked it uncovered in the oven. I live alone and want to treat myself to a rib roast and I think the smallest available in my supermarket is 2-3 ribs. How can I cook it to medium rare withour drying it out?

Thanks

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (5)

sushipup1
12 years ago
A three rib is WAY too much. We got a 3-rib for Thanksgiving for 3 of us, and wound up freezing some of the leftovers. We only ate maybe 2/5th of it. A 2-rib roast is better.
Use the method we've been discussing, and it will be perfect.

Here is a link that might be useful: perfect prime rib
John Liu
12 years ago
As long as the internal temperature is not too high (I think of medium rare as 120F or so), it won't dry out.

You can experiment with various interesting approaches. For simplicity's sake, and assuming you're not fanatical about exactly how many millimeters of gray meat you'll tolerate, I would simply do this:

- Take roast from refrigerator. Rub meat all over with salt. Let it sit on the counter until it gets to room temperature, 60-70F, a couple hours.
- Pre-heat oven to 200F, place roast in oven with probe thermometer inserted in the center. Remove when center's temp is 90F, and wait 1/2 hour for temp to even out. Exterior of roast is hottest e.g. 150F, center is coldest e.g. 90F, as temp evens out the center's temp will rise. If center's temp stabilizes below 110F, put roast back in oven for a bit and repeat until center stabilizes around 110F, or close enough.
- Heat empty cast iron pan over high burner for 5 minutes. Squirt some oil into the pan, heat the oil until it is smoking and spitting. Place roast in pan to sear, check it every minute to see if it is crusty and brown enough for you. Don't exceed 3 minutes searing. Because the roast is already close to 110F throughout, you shouldn't have to sear for too long and won't create too much of an overcooked gray band. If you keep the probe in the meat while searing, you can make sure the center temp doesn't get above 115 F. No need to "rest" after searing, you can wait a bit to let center temp rise to the desired 120 F, but if the temp looks like it is going to overshoot, you can slice it pronto.
- The pan has to be really! rocket! hot!, otherwise you will turn the whole roast overcooked and gray before you achieve browning. If you prefer, you can instead put the broiler on high, and sear by holding the roast right up in the flames for a minute.

The reason I'm suggesting this process is that with a small roast, it makes sense to take special care to minimize the gray band, as it could otherwise be a large percent of the meat. Just putting a 2-3 lb roast into a 400F oven runs the risk of overcooking the meat before you can get a nice crusty sear.
Related Discussions
Nailing A Prime Rib
Q
Comments (13)
I'm unconcerned about using galvanized nails in roasting meat - at least, doing in occasionally. Here is why: Zinc is an essential nutrient, in small quantities. Recommended daily intake is about 11 mg/day for adults. There are zinc supplement pills, if you don't get enough. Upper limit for sustained intake is about 40 milligrams/day. For one-time exposure to zinc, toxic effects start around 100 mg. Each galvanized nail has around 0.6 gram of zinc. So about 15% of the zinc on the nail would have to dissolve into one serving of meat, to get into the range of toxicity. But the zinc coating on a nail won't start melting until around 800 F. This temperature is never reached inside the meat. It never gets above 120 F in there. That is a temperature similar to hot tap water. So I conclude that roughly "no" zinc got into the meat. Nails can have oil and grease on them too, but hopefully I cleaned that off by scrubbing with detergent and hot water.
...See More
Low & slow prime rib--any comments?
Q
Comments (14)
A similar method to the CI and Serious Eats methods was posted on Cooking for Engineers in 2005 using a sear first,then roast at 200 degree method. They also suggested taking the roast out of the refrigerator several hours before cooking so that it starts near room temperature and I think this is an important step. I've used this method a lot - always with success. I would definitely suggest the roast first then sear approach both because it is easier and also because if your roast is large enough it may brown sufficiently during the roasting and you might not need to sear at all. One final point - if you want your roast to end up around 125 degrees you will need to take it out at a lower temperature, somewhere around 120-122 degrees because it will go up as it rests. Go for it! It will be delicious. Lee
...See More
What sides with Prime Rib?
Q
Comments (44)
Gorgonzola dolce is on the creamier side in comparison to other blue cheeses. It's a great "starter" blue in case you have trepidation about more powerful blues. It's hard to tell you what to choose from unless we know what your choices are! Do you have a cheese monger near you? Good "gourmet" cheese sections at your local stores? Local artisans selling cheese at a farmers market? What you have available for purchase greatly affects the answer to your question. What I can tell you for sure is that when you buy your blue, taste it! If it seems powerful to your taste buds, use less of it. There's no bad blue, imo. Just gradations in piquantness/boldness.
...See More
Should I try making prime rib?
Q
Comments (60)
My dinner was a huge success! I'm a beginner with lots to learn and you have all been wonderful. We sliced the bones off the roast, salted liberally, and tied the ribs back on 2 days before cooking (another Serious Eats, Food Lab article - scroll down to SALT). I read that the salt will draw the moisture out at first, but then it will reabsorb the moisture along with the salt, carrying the seasoning deep within the meat. This was the only thing I did differently from a few weeks ago when I ran my trial run, and this roast was far superior. It was the same cut of meat (choice), from the same store (CostCo), and cooked the same way. So it must have been the 2 day seasoning. I let the roast sit on the counter for 2 hours, then used the Serious Eats Food Lab recipe to cook low and slow - it took 4 1/2 hours for the 11lb roast to reach 122. I did make a mistake here - instead of removing the roast from the roasting pan to sit for an hour (like I did 2 weeks ago), I simply tented the roast in the pan. I think the pan caused the roast to continue to cook. I used the same probe and oven as 2 weeks ago, so unless it went bad in that time, this has to be the reason it was overcooked. However, the flavor was fabulous, so I really have no complaints. Following the Serious Eats recipe - it did go back into the oven for 10 minutes at 500 to develop a beautiful sizzling crust. I made 2 pans of Yorkshire puddings. When everything came out of the oven and my guests were serving themselves, I popped the second pan in and proudly served a second helping to all at the table 30 minutes later. What I learned from this is the pan makes a HUGE difference! I bought a new muffin pan since I didn't have 2 and the new pan the YP's rose so high and popped right out unlike my old pan where they still looked OK, but I had to use a knife to work them out. I made my Au Jus ahead of time by making a rich stock from browning bones, oxtails, veggies for a couple of hours and them simmering them for 24 hours. I did this 2 weeks ago and froze it. Yesterday I let it simmer for another couple of hours and added any Jus from the meat before serving. I'm so glad I did this! Not only was it easier on me, but I never would have had enough Jus otherwise. Everyone took a little Au Jus cup on their plate and I put the rest into gravy boats for the table - most of which was used. I'm very proud of my dinner and I couldn't have done it without the help from all of you on this forum. :-) Thank-you! Jeri
...See More
sushipup1
12 years ago
Bumping this because lots of people have plans for prime rib this week.
westsider40
8 years ago
Bump
Islay Corbel
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
We'll be putting ours on the BBQ. Easiest way to get a good result, I think. But, We cook a single rib at a time.

Very small prime rib roast

Comments (5)

sushipup1

John Liu

Related Discussions

sushipup1

westsider40

Islay Corbel

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US