4 Delicious Recipes for Perfect Prime Rib (2024)

FAQs

How do you get the best flavor on 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.

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 do restaurants make prime rib so tender? The secret to restaurant-style prime rib is cooking the meat super slow at low temperatures. I recommend cooking prime rib at no higher than 200 degrees F. This cooks the meat very slowly, turning the fat into butter and rendering the proteins juicy and soft.

Put the roast on a rack (or on top of some carrots, celery and sliced onion, which will flavor the drippings nicely) in the roasting pan, and add just a little water to the bottom of the pan — it shouldn't touch the meat.

Do you cover prime rib roast when cooking? You can cover rib roast when cooking after searing it to help it retain some of its moisture, but it's not necessary. For the best results, leave the roast uncovered until you remove it from the oven or grill and place it at room temperature for resting.

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.

Cook until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the prime rib registers 130 degrees F for medium rare, 35 to 45 minutes of cooking time per pound. An 8-pound roast will take about 5 1/2 to 6 hours.

A low and slow start delivers perfectly evenly cooked medium-rare doneness all the way from edge to center. Blasting the prime rib with heat just before serving gives you a crackling-crisp, browned crust.

For the best results, leave your prime rib roast out on the counter to come up to room temperature for two to three hours before cooking. It's not advisable to leave it much longer than three hours to help prevent the development of bacteria.

A thermometer is the only way to guarantee perfectly cooked meat, and a good instant read thermometer is the best one for the job. 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).

Do you wash prime rib before cooking? ›

Cooking (baking, broiling, boiling, and grilling) to the right temperature kills the bacteria, so washing food is not necessary. Using a food thermometer is the only sure way of knowing if your food has reached a high enough temperature to destroy foodborne bacteria.

It's no secret that roasts need to cook slow and slow, but for that killer crust on a prime rib the secret is to hit it with a lot of heat first. Like our other prime rib recipes, this rosemary-rubbed prime rib cooks at 450F for 20 minutes before cooking for another 60 to 90 minutes at 350F.

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.

“You want to have the beef nice and moist,” says owner Joe Betz. Once the salt is in place, the meat is put into the oven for around two and a half hours at a medium temperature. The salt helps trap the heat to better cook the prime rib. “It conducts the heat and seals it,” says Betz.

Mix garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme together in a small bowl. Place roast in a roasting pan with the fatty side up. Spread mixture over the top of roast; let roast sit out until it is at room temperature, no longer than 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C).

For best results, salt your prime rib on all surfaces with kosher salt at least 45 minutes before you start cooking it, and preferably the day before, leaving it in the fridge uncovered overnight. Initially, the salt will draw out some moisture and end up dissolving in it.

The difficulty with prime rib comes down to surface area. The crust to meat ratio is extremely low, especially when compared to a normal steak. Only a small amount of crust is enjoyed in each bite, and the center can be lacking in flavor.