re: TD Recipe Collection 8th Edition (with links)

The Prime Rib, or Standing Rib Roast, is the king of the roasts.

You can usually find a "choice" grade Prime Rib at your local butcher shop and some supermarkets. Higher end markets will usually carry some "prime" grade Prime Ribs around the holidays. Beware of frozen Prime Ribs. Unfortunately, some purveyors buy Prime Ribs in the off-season and freeze them for up to 10 months.



The roast should not be left out for hours to bring it to room temperature because some bacteria leave behind toxic proteins when they multiply (e.g. staph) that can't be cooked away

Other Guides
There are a number of recipes/guides for cooking Prime Rib that already exist. Unfortunately, we have found that they suffer from one or more of the following three shortcomings. One, they do a reasonable good job on small roasts (e.g. 2 ribs), but ruin large roasts (e.g. 4-7 ribs). Two, they do not correctly account for carryover cooking which leads to an imprecise result. Three, they suggest leaving your roast out for up to ten hours beforehand, which is incredibly unsafe.

What You Will Need
Cooking tools:

A roasting pan (wider than the roast)
A roasting rack
An oven safe probe thermometer (recommended) or quick read thermometer
Ingredients for roast:

Standing rib roast, cold
Room temp butter (quantities below)
Freshly ground black pepper (quantities below)
Herbs, your preference, e.g. Herbs de Provence (quantities below)
Salt (quantities below)
Ingredients for au jus:

Beef stock (quantities below)
Flour (quantities below)
Pan drippings (quantities below)
Ingredient Amounts:
Ingredient Prime Rib Size
3 ribs 4 ribs 7 ribs
butter (oz) 3 4 8
pepper (tbsp) 1 1 1/2 3
herbs (tsp) 1 1/2 2 4
salt (tbsp) 2 1/2 3 6
beef stock, low sodium (oz) 6 8 16
flour (tbsp) 1/3 1/2 1
drippings (cups) 1/4 1/3 1/2

Quick Directions
We will explain the following steps in depth, but here is a quick summary:

Choose an appropriately sized roast (2 people per rib). Choose amount of dry aging based on preference and doneness. Recommendation: Rare - 50 days, Medium-Rare - 30 days, Medium - Fresh (no aging). Have your butcher bone and tie the roast for easy slicing or french and tie the roast if serving on the bone.
Mix soft room temp butter, pepper, and herbs. Remove roast from fridge and cover the entire roast with the mixture. Now sprinkle the salt all over the roast, but use a very light application over the ribs and ends.
Put roast on roasting rack and place in roasting pan. Insert roast into a pre-heated 450°F oven. The cooking time of this phase depends on the size: 30 minutes for 3-4 ribs and 45 minutes for 7 ribs.
Turn the oven down to 250°F and cook the roast for another 30 minutes.
Remove roast from oven, but do not turn off. After a 30 rest, return the roast back to oven.
The roast needs to cook at 250°F until the center of the roast is 15°F below the target temperature: 110°F for rare, 115° for medium-rare, 125°F for medium (carryover cooking will add 15°F to these). The easiest way to determine this is to use a probe to monitor the internal temperature. Alternatively, you can use a quick read thermometer to occasionally measure the temperature. The center will cook ~1°F every two minutes. (I.e., if you have 20 degrees to go, then you need about 40 minutes.) (This step typically takes about 60-90 minutes for rare, 70-100 minutes for medium-rare and 90-120 minutes for medium.)
Remove the roast from the oven, wrap in foil and let it rest for 30 minutes. Remove the roast from foil and let it rest another 15 minutes. Make an au jus from the pan drippings (as described in this guide).
Slice the rib as desired and plate. Serve with au jus.