Hey there Honey's and New-Bees!

A couple of years ago I decided to stay in for my birthday and have a home-cooked meal rather than eat out at a restaurant. In all honesty I got a lot of raised eyebrows when I told my friends, but I knew I’d come a long way in my cooking and had reached the point that I enjoyed my own cooking more than eating out, so it seemed only logical to want to make my own birthday dinner.

Since it was a special occasion I decided to treat (and challenge) myself by making a Prime Rib Roast. This was my first time making a Rib Roast and I was more than a little nervous about it since it was a pretty expensive cut, and I’d heard rumors that it was pretty high-maintenance to make. So I did a lot of research, and discovered how easy it actually is to make this delicious roast! 

Since the meat is so tender and tasty on it’s own, all you need to do is season it with some salt and pepper, then pop it into your oven for a couple of hours. But don’t let the couple of hours intimidate you, the roast is pretty low maintenance and you just need to do a  quick calculation to figure out how long to leave the heat on in your oven before turning off the heat and letting the roast slow cook while the oven slowly cools down for a couple of hours. Yes, that’s right, your going to cook the meat with your oven turned OFF!

As you’ll see below the steps are pretty simple to follow, and the meat only requires a little bit of salt and pepper (but you can add some additional seasonings if you like). However, the most important part is remembering to be patient and keep the oven door closed (no peeking) while the roast cooks. This roast does take a little longer than most recipes – and it’s totally worth it!

This step is pretty straightforward and easy, all you need to do is take your roast out of the fridge, pat it down dry and let it sit at room temperature until it reaches room temperature.

As I’ve mentioned before, you never want to take a cold piece of meat and put it directly into the oven, not only will this “shock” the meat but it will actually prevent the meat from cooking evenly. I usually let my roast sit about 2-3 hours covered on my counter (away from the sunlight) before I cook it.

While your roast is tempering make sure to write down the weight that’s on the label, or weigh it, and jot it down on a piece of paper to use later. You’ll need this info a little later so that you know how long to you need to keep the oven on before letting the roast slow cook.

Once your roast has tempered it’s time to season it. For this part you can get as creative as you want and season it to your liking. Personally, I like to keep it real simple since the meat itself is so flavorful and juicy on it own, so I just generously salt the roast with coarse salt, ground pepper and chopped garlic.

Like I said, feel free to play around with the flavors as you like by adding some fresh herbs like fresh rosemary or thyme if you have some on hand 😊

Now all that’s left to do is to place the roast on a roasting rack in a large roaster and put it in the oven that has been pre-heated to 475ºF.

Once the roast is in the oven it’s time to do some simple math to calculate how long you need keep your roast at 475ºF before turning off the oven. To calculate the time, take the weight of the meat (which you jotted down earlier) and multiply each pound by five. So if your roast is 6 pounds, you will calculate 6 (pounds) x 5 (mins) = 30 mins, meaning that after your roast has been in the oven 30 minutes, TURN OFF the heat.

Once you’re roast has been roasting at 475ºF for the allotted amount of time, TURN YOUR OVEN OFF. Yes, that’s right turn off your oven and let your roast slow cook for 2 hours and DO NOT OPEN YOUR OVEN AT ALL! This was seriously the hardest part since I’m a pretty curious person and had a hard time resisting the urge to peak every so often, but it’s REALLY important you resist that urge and not open the oven. While the oven remains closed it cools down very slowly and the roast will slow cook. However, if you open the oven (even for just a small peak) you’ll release a lot of heat which will completely ruin the slow-cooking process.

Continue to let the roast slow cook for 2 hours, then you can open your oven and take the roast out. But before cutting into it right away, let the roast sit at room temperature for about 10-15 minutes so all the juices settle, and then you can carve, serve and enjoy! 

Usually, I strongly recommend using a meat thermometer to check if your roast is done before pulling it out of the oven, but for this method (called the closed-oven method) you don’t need to do that as your roast will be a perfect medium rare when it comes out (but you can still check the temp if you’re really nervous).

Hope you enjoy and please let me know how your roast turned out!