Prime Rib with Chimichurri

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I made prime rib for the first time this Christmas. It was pricey and lots of a meat for a single person to eat but I really wanted to embark on this experiment. These are some of the learnings I picked up.

Prime Rib

For cooking the prime rib, I used the “reverse-sear” method. Reverse sear is where the meat is slowly brought up to temperature and then seared in an hot oven at the end. This technique contrasts with the conventional approach of initially browning the meat before roasting it.

The main advantage is that it’s similar to sous-vide, where the gentle heat transfer results in even cooking. The large time window can be forgiving for adjusting and course-correcting.

Prime Rib:

I followed Serious Eats recipe for instructions.

Recipe

With this cut of beef, there’s nothing you really need to do beyond salting.

  • Rib roast
  • salt

Technique

  1. Generously salt the roast all over.
  2. Leave in refrigerator overnight, uncovered.

This dry brine and leaving the meat uncovered is typical for drying out the surface.

  1. Preheat oven to lowest temperature possible. My oven went down to 170F/75C.
  2. Put roast in and wait for hours.
  3. Remove once desired temp (135F/55C for medium-rare) is reached.
  4. Preheat oven to the highest it can go. My oven went up to 500F/260C.
  5. Put roast in and watch it crisp. This will require constant attention to ensure it doesn’t burn or overcook.

Notes

The lower oven temperatures might not be accurate (even though ovens are not super accurate to begin with). This is fine, just don’t blindly use someone else’s settings and time estimates, you’ll need to adjust.

Remove the meat once it reaches desired doneness, not before. The low oven temperature results in very slow heat transfer and there will not be much “carry-over” energy that continues to rise the internal temperature.

Calibrating oven temperature

Since I moved to a new oven setup, I wasn’t sure how the oven behaves. I made the mistake of using this roasting instance to test the oven’s temperature accuracy.

For calibrating an oven, you can use water in a pyrex bowl for temperature less than 212F/100C. For hotter temperatures, use a high-temp oil. Due to heat transfer slowing down as temperature differential is smaller, it will take a long time to get a true read. Something like 2+ hours to each final temperature. During this team, the variable you’re dealing with can be heat loss due to evaporation, which can keep the water temperature depressed and give low reading. This was the mistake in my approach.

I set the oven temperature and measured the temperature after 20 minutes. These are the the readings:

Set temperature (F) Measured Temperature (F)
180 135
200 145
225 155
250 165
300 175

As you can see, there’s a large gap in measured temperature and set temperature. However, I didn’t wait 2+ hours to get a true read. I know for a fact that foods will brown at 350F/180C in this oven, so that’s definitely much hotter than <200F.

After all this, I can safely say it’s way easier to get an oven thermometer instead. They’re very inexpensive, <$10.

Chimichurri

I didn’t make an au jus to eat the prime rib with but I decided to go with chimichurri instead. Chimichurri is a sauce that comes from Argentina. It’s commonly eaten with grilled meats. It’s basically a cousin to pesto and other herb-oil sauces.

The primary ingredients of chimichurri are: parsley, garlic, oil, oregano, chili flakes, and wine vinegar. You can add whatever else you’d like but the main flavour profile is garlicky, chili, and herbaceous.

Chimchurri:

I used this recipe from Simply Recipes to get inspired. But this sauce doesn’t require a recipe, it’s more of a general idea for an herb sauce. Feel free to tweak as you like, as long as you continue to hit the primary flavour notes of herbaceous and garlicky.

Recipe

  • 1 cup of parsley, finely chopped
  • 3 cloves of garlic, roughly smashed
  • 1 tbsp dry oregano
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 tbsp wine vinegar
  • 2 tsp chili flakes
  • salt
  • pepper

These numbers are from memory. The exact values don’t matter, the general ratio will be in the right ball park. Adjust to taste, for all ingredients.

Technique

The easy and recommended way is to shove everything into a food processor and move on with life. But I decided to use a mortar and pestle and so we have this intricate process.

  1. Grind garlic, salt, and pepper. Add some oil if needed.
  2. Add chili flakes and oregano (dry spices).
  3. Add parsley. Keep paste dry-ish, it will help with grinding.
  4. Once everything is finely mashed, add remaining oil and wine vinegar.
  5. Grind but with the intent to emulsify.