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Rib Roast |
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There's no better beef roast than this. If you want to gussy it up a bit, you can pour on some Worcestershire sauce before the olive oil, or you can use garlic parsely marinade instead of the olive oil, but don't do too much—you want to bring out the flavour of the beef, not disguise it. For hearty eaters you want about 1 rib's thickness for each two people you're going to serve.
The day before, unwrap your roast, sprinkle it with salt and fresh pepper, and place it, uncovered, on a rack in the fridge.
Four hours before dinner time take the beef out of the refrigerator.
Peel the garlic clove and cut it in half lengthways. Rub each side of the beef with the cut side of one of the pieces of garlic. Brush the joint with olive oil or melted butter and sprinkle it with herbes de Provence.
Set the beef aside, covered with a piece of wax paper until you're ready to start cooking.
About 4 hours before dinner, pre-heat your oven to 250F.
When the oven is hot, place the roast, bone-side down or, if boneless, on a rack in a roasting pan and put it in the oven. Roast it for 2–2.5 hours, until an instant-read thermometer poked into the middle of the roast shows 115F for medium-rare or 120F for medium.
Take the roast out of the oven and let it rest for a half hour or so.
A half hour before mealtime, crank the oven up to 500F. You can brush the beef with more unsalted butter at this point if you wish. Wait 10 minutes, then put the roast back in the oven for 15 minutes, pull it out, place it on a cutting board, and carve it up.
I have an old Farberware rotisserie and spit. If there was one in your family, your grandmother probably sold it at a garage sale in 1980. I love this thing (and so do the cats) and use it quite often. It makes great roast beef, pork ribs, whole chicken, or duck. Just using it as a broiler, you can do flank steak, oysters, fish, or spatchcocked chicken on it too.
About 2 hours before dinner, heat up the spit for 10 minutes and put the roast on. Lower the spit so the beef almost brushes the heating element as it turns. You won't need to baste it.
It should be done rare in about 1.5 hours (1 hour if you just have a 1-bone roast), but do use an instant-read thermometer to check the internal temperature. Take it off the spit and let it rest under a foil tent for 10–15 minutes before you carve it.
If you want to do this with a 2 lb. tri-tip, cooking time should be about 40–45 minutes, depending on how rare you like it.