pan? That’s the sound of moisture evaporating and bubbling
out from underneath the meat. A prime rib that has first been
roasted, on the other hand, has had several hours in a hot
oven, during which time the exterior has completely dried
out, making searing much more efficient and thus giving all
but the very exterior of the meat less chance of
overcooking.
Taking what I had learned from both the oven-
temperature testing and the searing testing into account, I
knew what I had to do to fulfill all three commandments: my
goal should be to cook the interior of the roast as slowly as
possible (i.e., at as low a temperature as my oven could
maintain), then sear it as fast as possible (i.e., at as high a
heat as possible). But searing in a pan is not that practical
for a roast bigger than a couple of ribs, so I needed a way to
do this all in the oven.
While some recipes simply have you pump up the oven
temperature toward the end of cooking, this is suboptimal.
An oven can take 20 or 30 minutes to go from its lowest
temperature to its highest temperature setting, during which
time, once again, the outer layers of beef are busy
overcooking. But then I thought, 20 to 30 minutes is exactly
how long a rib roast needs to rest anyhow. What if I were to
first cook it at a low temperature (200°F or lower), then take
it out of the oven and allow it to rest while I heated the oven
to its highest temperature (500° to 550°F), and pop it back
in just long enough to achieve a crust?
What I achieved was nothing less than Prime Rib
Perfection:
nandana
(Nandana)
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