Prime Rib

Prime Rib Roast and Hasselback Potatoes

Looking for a prime rib roast recipe? If you need prime rib cooking times, but your oven is occupied with side dishes and dessert, here’s an idea – cook your prime rib on the grill. It’s easy to do over indirect heat – closing the lid creates an oven environment, and the grill itself imparts a wonderful flavor – and it’s just as easy as doing it in the oven. A great solution if your kitchen is starting to overflow, which mine tends to do on Christmas day – and it keeps your oven free for making Yorkshire pudding.

To prep your prime rib, use any type of dry rub, or try painting it with mustard and salting and peppering it and pressing chopped fresh rosemary all over it, then crank the barbecue up to high. When it’s good and hot (the dial will register around 600 degrees) throw it on, sear it on all sides, then turn off one side of the barbecue and leave the other one on high. Place the prime rib on the side of the barbecue that’s been turned off, throw some wood chips in if you like -some barbecue experts use chunks of wine barrel- and close the lid. This creates an oven environment, just like you’d have in your kitchen. It should take 1 1/2-2 hours for a 5 lb roast. Regardless of its size, when the meat registers 125F on a meat thermometer pull it off, wrap it in a few layers of foil, and let it rest until the temperature goes up to around 142F – that final cooking time utilizes the meat’s residual heat, trapping moisture and cooking it perfectly evenly throughout.
You really don’t need a recipe for Hasselback potatoes. Choose thin-skinned potatoes like Yukon gold, scrub them, and slice them thinly (try for 1/4 inch), cutting not quite all the way through. At this point you could slide any number of ingredients in between the slices – thinly sliced garlic is what I did, but you could tuck in whole sage leaves or bits of prosciutto or parma ham. Set the potato on a piece of tin foil, drizzle it with canola or olive oil, dab with a bit of butter if you like, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Wrap it up and throw it on the grill. Depending on the heat they should take about an hour; turn them once in awhile. And if your grill is full, you can throw them on the upper shelf, where they will get the heat when it’s closed, creating an oven environment. That’s it. Do as many as you want. Merry Christmas!