“This is one of my favorite holiday traditions. It is a traditional Christmas dish, and in my family, my father would make Yorkshire pudding to accompany it, and we would follow with my Grandmother’s brandy soaked plum pudding. We would often pair it with an aged Bordeaux, with which it goes deliciously. In this vein, an older vintage of QN Arsenal or Cabernet Franc would be perfect.” – Herb Quady
Ingredients:
- One standing rib roast, 3 to 7 ribs (2 people per rib), bones cut away from the roast and tied back to the roast with kitchen string (your butcher can prepare the roast this way)
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Butter
Method:
1. Remove roast from the refrigerator at least 3 hours before cooking. The roast needs to come up to room temperature before it goes in the oven.
2. Preheat the oven to 500F, or as high as it can go. Generously sprinkle salt and pepper all over the roast and rub it down with butter.
3. Insert a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the roast, making sure it doesn’t touch the bone.
4. After 15 minutes on 500F, reduce the heat to 325F. Allow 13-15 minutes per pound for rare and 15-17 minutes for medium rare. Error on the rare side, the roast will continue cooking once you take it out of the oven to “rest” and an overdone roast is a tragedy. Temperature on the meat thermometer should read 120F for rare or 130F for medium. Check about a half hour before you expect the roast to be done.
5. Once the desired meat temperature is reached, remove the roast from the oven and let it rest on a carving board, “tented” with aluminum foil.
6. While the roast is resting, you can make gravy with the drippings.
7. Carve by trimming the meat from the bones and then cutting across the grain.