Every Christmas, my family cooks a standing rib roast with Yorkshire pudding. My husband roasts the prime rib to juicy perfection and the Yorkshire pudding is my baby. I’m not sure how it started. We’re not British, or maybe just a little bit – we’ve got lots of nationalities in the family tree – so it’s not something that’s been handed down to us. I guess we just thought it sounded like a fun thing to try and it turned out so well, it’s become our Christmas tradition!
We started out cooking the roast prime rib according to The All New All Purpose Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker. They do a 450 degree F roast for 10 minutes to brown the roast and then turn down the temp to 250 degrees F and let the roast finish cooking. We did our prime rib that way several years and it was great. But then we saw a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated magazine written by Dan Souza and it’s even better. With the old method, the roast prime rib always had a ¾ inch or so band of a bit overdone meat on the outer edge. Not a big deal, the rest was pretty pink, especially in the middle. But with this new technique, you get a well-browned exterior as well as uniformly pink meat all the way from middle to edge and the lower temperature roast means the meat retains more of its juices.
A dry brine, sear and very slow roast produce moist, tender, perfectly cooked prime rib with a crispy brown exterior.
Hubby has adapted the recipe very slightly mainly to simplify it just a little and we’ll give you a couple of options for how to handle the roast. The first step is seasoning it with salt and then letting it sit in the fridge for 24 – 96 hours – essentially a dry brine. This helps dry out the surface so it browns nicely and also helps it retain moisture and flavor. Then you sear the outside of the roast in a pan on the stove top and then roast it in a 200 degree F oven for about 30 minutes per pound until it reaches a temperature in the center of 120 F for rare or 125 F for medium rare.
To sear with the bones on or not?
The options really come down to whether you want a little more fuss for making it easier to handle the roast when you sear it. The original recipe calls for cutting away the bones from the standing rib roast and then searing it – that way you get to season it all over and it’s easier to handle turning it on its various sides in the pan. Then you use kitchen twine to tie the bones back onto the roast before roasting. Those bones impart a lot of flavor. A little fuss on the front end, but it does eliminate the need to cut the bones away after roasting. Instead you just snip the twine and you’re ready to carve into slices. That is how we do ours – definitely makes the searing easier. Or you can just leave the bones on and sear it intact and then roast.
The browned bits left from searing the prime rib lend flavor to the Au Jus and the rendered fat can be used to make Yorkshire pudding.
Depending on the size of your standing rib roast and whether you leave the bones on, you may be able to do the searing in a large skillet or you may need to use a roasting pan spread over 2 burners. In any case leave the rendered fat and the lovely browned bits in the searing pan. If you want to make Yorkshire pudding you’ll be using that fat. Yeah, I know it’s mostly saturated fat, but anything you eat only once a year isn’t going to have a significant impact on your health and a lot of the fat ends up left in the bottom of the pan rather than in the pudding anyway. And those lovely browned bits will be the base for your au jus to serve with the beef. This story continues with my next post on the best gluten-free, dairy-free Yorkshire pudding – I think it’s even better than the wheat version!
The loin or small end of the standing rib roast is best.
Any size standing rib roast will work in this recipe. Figure a 2 rib roast, weighing 4-5 pounds will serve 4-6 people. Each additional rib will feed 2-3 more people. It does make a difference the end of the ribs from which your roast comes. The more desirable loin end or small end also called first cut gives you a larger, more uniformly tender piece of central meat without fat running through it. The large end or chuck end also called second cut gives you variable tenderness and flavor and lines of fat through the center. The largest standing rib roast you can get, a full roast will have both ends and a total of 7 ribs.
- 1 standing rib roast (the small or loin end is preferable to the large or chuck end)
- Kosher salt and pepper
- About 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- ½ cup red wine
- 3 cups beef stock
- To make the roast easier to handle when searing and allow seasoning all over you can cut the bones away and tie them back on after searing. If you choose to do this, just cut the meat away from the ribs, getting as close to the ribs as possible.
- Do not trim the fat cap – it will baste the meat as it roasts.
- Pat the roast dry and season all over with salt. Figure about 2 Tbsp salt for a 3-bone roast. Adjust accordingly to size.
- Refrigerate uncovered 24 – 96 hours.
- Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
- Heat enough oil to cover bottom of pan in a large skillet over high heat (or if you’ve got a very large roast you can put a roasting pan over 2 burners and heat). When the oil just begins to smoke, sear the roast just until well-browned on all sides except for the bone side or side that was cut from the bones – do not brown that side. It should take 6 – 8 minutes total.
- Place the roast back on the ribs fitting it to where it was cut.
- When it’s cooled enough to handle, tie the bones to the roast, tying a length of twine around it between each pair of ribs.
- Set the roast, fat cap up on a rack in a sheet pan. This will allow good air circulation around the roast for even cooking.
- Roast at 200 degrees F for about 30 minutes per pound until the internal temperature reaches 120 F for rare or 125 F for medium rare. The best way to monitor the temperature is with a probe inserted into the center to a depth of about an inch away from the bone hooked up to an electronic thermometer that sits outside the oven. If you don’t have one, take the roast out periodically, shutting the oven door and check it with a meat thermometer.
- When done let it rest, tented with aluminum foil for about 30 minutes.
- While it rests, if you’re making Yorkshire pudding, you’ll start that by melting the rendered beef fat in the pan that you seared in and pouring ¼ cup of that into your pudding pan.
- We’ll get to the Yorkshire pudding in another post, but once you’ve poured off that hot fat into your pudding pan, and gotten the pudding in the oven, you’ll deglaze the skillet that you seared in with some red wine and add some beef stock to make your jus.
- Once you’ve used or discarded the oil from the skillet you used to sear the roast, add ½ cup red wine and cook over medium high heat, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spatula to release the browned bits. (If you seared in a roasting pan rather than a skillet you may need to add more wine here to get enough liquid in the pan to work with.)
- Boil down the wine until it’s reduced by half and then add the 3 cups beef stock.
- If you're cooking for a large crowd you can use more beef stock.
- Continue to boil periodically scraping the pan with your spatula until reduced by about half.
- Taste and season with salt and pepper if necessary.
- When ready, carve the bones away from the roast or snip the twine and remove bones, slice and serve.
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