Prime Rib for Christmas

As I mentioned, my family does a lot of 'fusion' if you will.  One of these is Christmas dinner and how we approach it.  While my family came to this country with the religious backgrounds of Buddhism and Shinto, a pagan religion indigenous to Japan, we changed once my generation was born with some of us being raised as Christians.  This was to become part of the culture of our new home.  Celebrating Christmas became a part of our holiday celebration, and prime rib became a part of our dining.  Who would not want to eat this?

But, I am jumping the gun here.  For starters, you need meat. I got up north and found that we still needed to go find the meat, cool, I like meat shopping. And I have not been doing as much of that since I was told to stop eating so much meat. We found Painted Hills Beef, Humboldt Grass-fed Beef and some store brand stuff which was all select. The Humboldt grass-fed is quite lean and while I like it, it is too lean to make a good prime rib. So, Painted Hills it was, and it was outstanding choice beef, some of the best choice I have seen. I felt the roasts were a little over-trimmed from what I asked for, and the butcher asked me over and over if I didn't mean to trim and retie the ribs, until I finally told him that I really really meant, leave them fully attached. But, these roasts were terrific quality.

 Roast One - 7 lbs

Roast Two - 5 lbs.

Then a slurry was prepared, Roast One got a mixture including Simply Marvelous Sweet and Spicy Rub. Roast Two got Dizzy Pig Salt Free Dizzy Dust. The other ingredients of the slurry rubs included olive oil, fish sauce, grated garlic and Bob's Top Rub mix.

Here they are ready to go. This is after having the wet rub applied and sitting for around 90 minutes to finish coming to temperature.

These little guys headed out onto the kettle, in this case my brother's OTG kettle. The kettle was was going along at 275F, the temperature outside ran from 55F down to 47F during the cook, it was pouring rain (yes, I think this matters). The meat was placed in a pan with onions, celery, scallions, garlic and 1 cup of water and 1 cup of Pacific beef broth. The rack in the above photo was for air circulation around the roast.

These were cooked for 5 hours to an internal of 130F, the meat was then removed, tented with aluminum foil and allowed to rest for 45 minutes. Bones were removed, meat was carved, and one platter disappeared from the adult table while I was carving the portions for the kids. Fortunately, I allowed 1.3 lbs per person, so there was no lack of meat for me.  Both of the wet rubs were outstanding, I would use either one without hesitation, which is why I use them, I suppose. We ate the Simply Marvelous on Christmas Day and everyone raved about the flavor.  I have to say that it has become my go to rub for most cooking I do in a more traditional smoking or live fire roasting.