Reverse sear prime rib baseball and first cut, plated. Some will say it’s too rare but that’s how we like it.
Yesterday as planned I used the reverse sear method to cook my 5 pound prime rib roast from Hannaford. The meat had been refrigerator aging under a Kosher salt rub since Monday. At 12:30 pm I took it out to bring to room temperature and rubbed in some fresh cracked black pepper and (at the urging of AI and various online nabobs) a little herbes de provence. At 1;30 I put it in a preheated 250 degree oven.
At 3 pm I checked and internal temperature was just below 90 degrees. So far so good. At 3:45 I checked again and temp had risen to 109 degrees. Panic time because dinner was planned for 5 pm and we were still missing some guests. Left the roast in a few more minutes (I had planned to cook to 115 degrees so it would end up on the rare side of medium rare) and let it sit under aluminum foil while I prepped other dishes. At 4:45 I put it back in the oven, now at 500 degrees, for a 10 minute sear. Sliced and served at 5 per plan.
The verdict? To paraphrase Jeffrey Hamelman’s quote about baking bread, “men drool, meat rules.” Meaning proofing or roasting will happen on its own schedule and you will either adjust or end up with a less than perfect result. My crust was fine (except the h de p was a completely unnecessary and distracting addition; I’ll never do that again). The flesh was rare to medium rare as desired. But the damn meat was COLD, or at least not as hot as desired. And I still ended up with a layer of grey just inside the crust which Kenji says this method will avoid; I didn’t and it didn’t matter because the meat tasted fine.
By comparison, in cooking hundreds of prime rib roasts at Victoria Station results were consistent and predictable. We were in charge, not the meat. We’d let the roast come to room temperature, blast it in a 500 or 550 degree convection oven for 50 minutes, check the temp expecting perfect results and if needed give it another 10 minutes. That’s what I did with a 9 pound 4 bone roast (which would cost a fortune today) in 2023 and that’s what I will do again next time. No more reverse sear prime rib in this kitchen.
As it came out of the oven.
Looks delicious!! and I agree…cold meat is a turn off.
Oh well. I’ve done much worse. Leftovers for roast beef hash? Less Kenji, more actual experience next year? That’s the best technique.
Leftovers not a problem, will make it into roast beef sandwiches and maybe a stroganoff. Kenji not a problem either, we take him with a grain of salt and appreciate his exhaustive attempts to ruin food. (Our still favorite is when he juiced onions in his wife’s pristine new juicer for Oklahoma style onion burgers.)
Wow, I am kind of surprised. I have done the Kenji reverse sear for the last three years including this Thanksgiving without that problem. I went a little further on the pull out temp (135-140) which I think Kenji suggests. That might have something to do with it 🙂
What I love about the reverse sear is you can pull it out of the oven at 135 degrees, tent it and it will hold for an hour easy while all the side dishes go in the oven.
135 degrees is way too done for our tastes, but of course with the higher temperature the roast will stay warm longer. Glad the method is working for you!