Insanely Delicious Prime Rib Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do restaurants make prime rib so tender? ›

How do restaurants make prime rib so tender? The secret to restaurant-style prime rib is cooking the meat super slow at low temperatures.

Balancing the salty, tangy, and savory flavors is key for a delicious prime rib. Salt enhances the bison's taste and helps form a flavorful crust. Tangy elements, like garlic and mustard, add depth to the flavor profile. Savory herbs and spices complement the meat's richness without overshadowing it.

Prime rib has a large “eye” of meat in the center, which is juicy, tender, and marbled with fat. This eye has a fat-marbled muscle around it, and the whole thing is surrounded by a thick cap of fat. This means that prime rib is tender, juicy, and extremely flavorful because the muscles aren't heavily used.

Remove the beef roast from the refrigerator 3 hours before you start to cook it. Sprinkle it with salt all over and let it sit, loosely wrapped in butcher paper. Roasts should be brought close to room temperature before they go into the oven to ensure more even cooking.

Prime rib should be cooked at 500F for 15 minutes, then lowered to 325F for the remainder of the cook time. A good slow roasting prime rib temp is 325F. It is the perfect temperature for medium rare prime rib.

Prepare the Rub

You can season the roast a day in advance, but no later than 2 hours before cooking time. The seasoning needs time to flavor the meat while it's raw.

Aim for 115 to 120°F for medium rare (125 to 130°F after resting), or 125 to 130°F for medium (135 to 140°F after resting). And remember, a roast will continue to rise by 5 to 10°F as it rests (see rule #13 below), so make sure to pull it out early to account for that!

Cooked low and slow in the oven and finished with a blast of heat for the juiciest, most flavorful, evenly cooked prime rib roast. Kenji is the former culinary director for Serious Eats and a current culinary consultant for the site.

Olive oil. There are lots of things to use as a binder, but I find that olive oil adds moisture and savoriness to any beef dish. Heath Riles BBQ Beef Rub. This is a big-boy rub made to season hearty steak.

Cook the prime rib at 500 F for 20 minutes. Then, turn the heat down to 325 F and cook it for another 1.5 hours – or until the internal temperature reaches. Once it's done, allow it to cool for 40 minutes under a foil tent. Then, slice it, serve with your favorite mashed potatoes, and enjoy!

How to infuse flavor into prime rib? ›

I love using fresh thyme, sage, oregano and parsley. Or use a premade herb blend such as Herbs de Provence. Score the beef and add whole peeled garlic cloves. This adds a beautiful flavor and aroma to your roast.

Here's a quick look at how to cook prime rib with the closed oven method: for medium-rare prime rib, you cook a prime rib roast at 500 degrees for 5-6 minutes per pound, then turn the oven off and leave the door closed for two hours. At that point, the temperature of the prime rib will be perfect (or very nearly so!)

Overcooking the Prime Rib

That's why prime rib is so expensive: it's a huge piece of extremely good beef. Therefore, it's important not to cook it beyond medium-rare. Going past that temperature means the roast will no longer be tender.

The rib primal is tucked into an area of the cow that doesn't do much work. The texture and flavor of beef often depends on whether the muscle has been working hard or if it's just along for the ride — hard-working muscle translates into tougher, leaner meat.

You'll cook the prime rib low and slow in the oven, then crank up the heat at the end to achieve a crisp outside. This method has several advantages: the prime rib loses less juice to the bottom of the roasting pan and it cooks evenly all the way through.

Storing your prime rib correctly is crucial to your leftovers staying as juicy and tasty as day one. First things first, wrap leftover prime rib tightly in plastic wrap, preferably keeping it intact rather than slicing it. This will help keep as much moisture inside as possible.