I’ve been given the task of cooking the entree for dinner tomorrow night, but instead of having an 11 lb. prime rib, I have a 4 lb. prime rib and a 7 lb. prime rid (don’t ask). I want them both to be cooked to the same level, between rare and medium rare, and I want them to both be ready to eat at the same time. Any suggestions on how best to do that? I only have one oven, but fortunately it’s large enough to accommodate both pieces of meat cooking at the same time.
I could start the larger piece and then put the smaller piece in later, but at what point should I put it in? Most recipes talk about the temperature to pull it out and not the time it takes to cook per pound. Any help would be appreciated!
Never mind, I found a website that says that a pound of prime rib should take 20-25 minutes to cook @ 325 degrees F. I can now stagger the roasts so that they get done at the same time (more or less). Easy peasy.
Use Paula Dean’s recipe. It will work with two roasts at once. Any size. Mix and match. Both will be ready at the same time. I guarantee it works every time. Been using it for years.
I made a couple of modifications. Here’s what I plan do do for tomorrow’s roast I’m cooking with a four-pound roast:
[ul]
[li]The roast sits at room temperature for two hours (not one as suggested in the recipe).[/li][li]Increase oven temperature to 400*F because I prefer my roast to be a bit more than medium rare. This temperature will make it medium.[/li][li]The roast sits on a rack, in a pan with an inch of water in it.[/li][/ul]
I use olive oil on the roast, then rubbed with my own seasoning.
FWIW, here’s how I’m heat-treating the deadcow tomorrow.
6-something pounds USDA Prime standing rib roast, three ribs, at room temperature. Trim the skeletal structure off as a unit. Pat the flesh dry, then give it a light rub of olive oil. Season with a bit of kosher salt, freshly-ground pepper, minced garlic, and some rosemary. (I hate to cut the sprigs of rosemary; since while they’re growing fairly well, it looks like we only have the same number of sprigs we started with a couple of years ago.) Season the side of the meat that was above the ribs, then use string to tie the ribs back onto the roast.
Put the roast onto a rack in a pan, and put it into a preheated 450ºF oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 325ºF and cook for 15 minutes per pound, or until the temperature at the thickest part of the musculature reaches 120ºF. Remove from the oven and let it sit for 20 minutes while the snails go into the oven.
The time it takes to cook a piece of meat is determined by the thickness of it’s thinnest dimension, not it’s weight. Weight is only used as a rule of thumb guide for people who don’t own thermometers. Given that a prime rib is over $100 and a good thermometer is only $10, it seems crazy not to own one.
What I like to do is cook a prime rib in an extremely low oven for 6 - 12 hours. Once the meat is at the temperature I like to serve it, I’ll take it out, crank the heat up to 500F and put in for another 10 minutes to brown the outside. This gives you a perfectly even interior and a great crust since the outside’s been slowly drying in the oven.
If you have the time, it’s by far the best way to cook prime rib.
My timer/thermometer is stuck on the fridge, and the probe goes into the meat in the oven. After removing the meat from the oven and letting it rest for 20-30 minutes (I was busy with the snails, so I don’t know exactly) the roast was nice and rare at 133ºF. Perfect. As I mentioned, this was a particularly good hunka meat. The SO usually doesn’t prefer rare beef – unless it’s a really good piece. She was pleased. And as I said in another thread, the meat was so tender that the knife virtually cut through it under its own weight.
I go low and slow. 250 degrees until done, which for us, is 118º - roasting at such a low temp does (at least) two good things.
Leaving it in the oven for 10 minutes too long is less ruinous than if you’re blasting away at 400º, and that magical thing called rendering can happen - a lot of the internal fat melts, so you get juicy and flavorful meat, rather than meat with scattered lumps of still-white fat. Also, you don’t get the unfortunate bulls-eye efect where there’s a dot of pink where the tip of the thermometer was, surrounded by sad brown overdone.
It’s too late now, but I’ll give this advice for anyone who’s still interested: be sure to let the meat rest after you’ve taken it out of the oven. If you cut it immediately, it will be brown at the edges and close to raw in the middle. Also, the juices that have pooled in the middle will run out. If you let the meat rest for a half hour or more, it will be an even pink all the way through, and it won’t leak juices all over the place when you cut it.
