Standing Rib Roast

One of our holiday traditions is cooking a standing rib roast on Christmas day. This year’s was an original, instead of following a recipe, Don improvised the rub and cooking time based on previous experience. The amounts below are guestimated, we just ground stuff into a small mixing bowl. Just go with what feel right, but these amounts should be close.

WARNING: Cooking and prep time is 5 hours, plan accordingly.

Ingredients:

Sanding Rib Roast, we buy around 8 lbs.

Rub ingredients:

1 tsp fresh ground sea salt

1 tsp paparika

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1/2 tsp fresh ground white peppercorn

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried parsley

1 tsp dried basil

Instructions:

Take the rib roast out of the fridge at least an hour before you cook it to bring it to room temperature. Apply the rub to it and let it stand. Some people put the rub on the night before, but the meat is so good, I wouldn’t want to overwhelm the flavor. Preheat the oven to 425°.

Put the rib roast on a rack, if possible. Rib side down. Put it into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, don’t open the door, but look through the window so you can see if the roast is braised. You really want it looking like ‘the final product’ on the outside. It shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes. Keeping the door shut, drop the temperature to 250° and let it cook for two hours.

Check the temperature in the center of the roast, if it’s at 120°, you’re at the ‘blood red’ center mode. If you’re like us, you’re shooting for ‘medium’ which means a pink center but a fair amount of well cooked meat on the outside.

At this point we tent the roast with aluminum foil and bring the temperature of the oven back up to 350 and check the temperature every 20 minutes or so until we just hit 140°. This should happen somewhere around 3:30 to 4:00 into the whole cooking process. If you don’t want too much red meat, shoot for 150°.

Let it stand for 20 to 30 minutes before slicking. Enjoy!

We serve ours with twice baked potatoes and green beans.