Simple is sometimes hard. OK, it’s usually hard. Christmas dinner this year was a command performance. Everyone has their favorites and they all made the list. Nothing was too difficult to make, but timing is everything.
BAM! How about that. First thing in the morning, a big hunk of meat. I love it. This year, I cooked it back to front: 250 degrees for three hours, let it rest, then sear before serving in a super hot oven. Salt, pepper and a little Canola oil. This was the easy part of the meal and it was a good thing, too. A wrecked seventy dollar piece of meat would have made a horrific center piece.
Norman Rockwell Americana on a plate. Garlic mashed potatoes were easy enough. I made them about two hours in advance. I reheated them right before the meal and added whole garlic cloves poached in olive oil with some of the garlic flavored oil. The carrots and pearl onions were both poached in water and butter. They took around 20 – 30 minutes. It was like they were racing. The carrots won. Making the peas was the coolest. Central Market Organics frozen peas straight in the microwave. I didn’t have any burners left on the cooktop anyway. Want to see more meat?
As pink as possible. That is the way I like prime rib. The first trick: bring it up to room temperature before cooking. This took four hours for a seven pound, bone in roast.
I could have cooked it slower, but we were slated to eat at 2:00pm, so I went with the evidence above. I should have pulled it earlier, but I’m an on the hour kind of guy. 118 degrees was my target. The temperature rose five more degrees while it rested. At this point, I think the roast can hang out, tented, for anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour before it goes back into the oven for the final blast. I cranked it up to 550 and put it in for around 8 minutes. The crust came out beautiful, but I did smoke the whole house. Kitchen ventilation is way underrated.
My favorite side was the carrots. You just don’t see carrots, by themselves, as a side (unless you have been hanging around an elementary school… and that would signal some other problems). Slow poached in water and butter. They still had a little tooth to them. Nothing worse than mushy carrots.
That meat looks crazy delicious.