Garlic Horseradish Prime Rib Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a good prime rib? ›

Horseradish sauce is a wonderful addition to prime rib. It elevates the meat and tenderizes it. My favorite sauce consists of prepared horseradish, sour cream, Worcestershire sauce, smooth mustard, Garlic Jalapeño Rub, salt, pepper, and champagne vinegar.

How do restaurants make prime rib so tender? The secret to restaurant-style prime rib is cooking the meat super slow at low temperatures. I recommend cooking prime rib at no higher than 200 degrees F. This cooks the meat very slowly, turning the fat into butter and rendering the proteins juicy and soft.

Prime rib has a large “eye” of meat in the center, which is juicy, tender, and marbled with fat. This eye has a fat-marbled muscle around it, and the whole thing is surrounded by a thick cap of fat. This means that prime rib is tender, juicy, and extremely flavorful because the muscles aren't heavily used.

How to Season Prime Rib. A roast is a large cut of meat: it needs more seasoning than you might expect. Season it generously with kosher salt the day before roasting it and let it sit in the fridge uncovered overnight. When you take it out of the fridge before roasting, add pepper and any additional herbs.

Remove the beef roast from the refrigerator 3 hours before you start to cook it. Sprinkle it with salt all over and let it sit, loosely wrapped in butcher paper. Roasts should be brought close to room temperature before they go into the oven to ensure more even cooking.

Prepared horseradish is made with grated horseradish root, vinegar, and salt. Prepared horseradish is not the same as horseradish sauce but is an ingredient in it. Horseradish sauce combines prepared horseradish with cream, sour cream, or mayonnaise, which makes it milder and creamier.

You can eat horseradish raw, pickled, or cooked, but it is most often added as a condiment to sauces. Horseradish is at its strongest and most biting when it is freshly grated.

However, the prime rib typically contains more bone and fat, which might give it a slight edge over the eye in terms of flavor. Bone-in ribeye, though, also benefits from the natural flavoring that comes from being cooked with the bone, so its flavor doesn't stray far from the prime rib.

Cooked low and slow in the oven and finished with a blast of heat for the juiciest, most flavorful, evenly cooked prime rib roast. Kenji is the former culinary director for Serious Eats and a current culinary consultant for the site.

Do you flip prime rib when cooking? ›

Cook the prime rib for about 10-15 minutes bone side down first, then flip it over and roast for 10-15 minutes fat side down. Brown the sides for 10 minutes per side.

Overcooking the Prime Rib

That's why prime rib is so expensive: it's a huge piece of extremely good beef. Therefore, it's important not to cook it beyond medium-rare. Going past that temperature means the roast will no longer be tender.

A good rule of thumb for purchasing bone-in prime rib is to buy one pound per person. A bone-in standing rib roast will feed about two people per bone. But if the roast is part of a bigger spread with plenty of other food, you can plan on 1/2 to 3/4 pound of prime rib per person.

Black pepper, kosher salt, and garlic powder are usually all the flavors you want with a prime rib.

It is important to understand that a “prime rib” does not necessarily mean that the meat is USDA graded prime beef. “Prime rib” refers to the cut, not the grade. So a “prime rib” may be USDA graded prime, choice or select. Ribeye steaks are more straightforward.

A good rule of thumb for purchasing bone-in prime rib is to buy one pound per person. A bone-in standing rib roast will feed about two people per bone. But if the roast is part of a bigger spread with plenty of other food, you can plan on 1/2 to 3/4 pound of prime rib per person.

Searing is an important part of roasting a prime rib. Searing the roast first will kill the surface bacteria, which is a nice touch, especially when you are roasting at lower temperatures.

Heat the oven to 250°F with the rack in the lower middle position. Cook for 4 to 5 hours or until the internal temperature in the thickest part of the roast is 125-130°F for medium-rare prime rib, or 135-140°F for medium.