Holiday Prime Rib of Beef

Ingredients:

4 pounds prime rib roast
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
kosher salt

Directions:

1.Place rib roast on a plate and bring to room temperature, about 4 hours.

2.Preheat an oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C).

3.Combine butter, pepper, and herbes de Provence in a bowl; mix until well blended. Spread butter mixture evenly over entire roast. Season roast generously with kosher salt.

4.Roast the 4-pound prime rib (see footnote if using a larger and smaller roast) in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Turn the oven off and, leaving the roast in the oven with the door closed, let the roast sit in the oven for 2 hours. Remove roast from the oven, slice, and serve.

NOTE:
Your cooking times will vary depending on the size of your prime rib roast. To calculate your cooking time, multiply the exact weight of the roast by 5. Round the resulting number to the nearest whole number. The rib is cooked at 500 degrees F for exactly that many minutes. For example, for a 6-pound roast: 6x5=30, so cooking time is 30 minutes. Turn the oven off and wait 2 hours before opening the oven door. Remove the prime rib and slice into the most perfectly medium-rare meat you've ever seen.

Prime Rib with Garlic Herb Butter

What You'll Need:

1 boneless or bone-in beef rib roast, trimmed and tied
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

How to Make It:

1.The night before you are going to cook the prime rib, unwrap the roast and let it sit uncovered in the refrigerator. This will dry out the surface, which makes it easier to get a nice brown color on the roast.

2.Three hours before you want to begin cooking, take the roast out of the fridge and place it on a cutting board at room temperature.

3.Half an hour before you start roasting, pre-heat your oven to 450°F and season the roast generously with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

4.When you're ready to cook, set the roast in a roasting pan with a rack, fat-side-up for a boneless prime rib. Or for a bone-in prime rib, skip the roasting rack and just set the roast bone-side-down in the roasting pan. Insert a meat thermometer or a digital probe thermometer into the deepest part of the meat, being careful not to hit bone. If you're using a digital probe thermometer, set it to alert you when the meat hits 120°F (see note below).

5.Roast for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 325°F and roast until the meat's internal temperature reaches 120°F, which will be another hour to three and a half hours, depending on the size of your roast.

6.When the prime rib hits 120°F, take it out of the oven and transfer it to a cutting board and cover it with foil. Leave the thermometer in! You're going to want to rest the meat for 30 to 45 minutes, during which time the temperature will continue rising to around 130°F, which is perfect medium-rare, and then drop back down to 120°. When it hits 120° it's fully rested and ready to slice and serve. Here's a simple Au Jus Recipe you can make while the meat is resting. Or try this creamy Horseradish Sauce.

Note: For medium-rare prime rib, we want to take the roast out of the oven at 120°F, and it will continue cooking until it reaches 130°F. If you prefer a medium prime rib, take it out at 130°F with a target temperature of around 140°. Either way, you'll still want to rest the meat until it comes back down to 120° before carving it.

This prime rib roast is cooked using a very traditional method of roasting it at a high temperature for a few minutes and then reducing the heat and finishing the cooking at a lower temperature.

This technique produces a perfectly medium-rare prime rib with a gorgeous brown crust on the outside. It will work equally well for either a bone-in or boneless prime rib of beef of between 4 and 18 pounds. For a bone-in prime rib, figure two servings per rib, while a boneless roast will yield two servings per pound.

Roasted Leg of Lamb and Gravy

What You'll Need:

2 cloves garlic
1.5kg (3lb 3oz) leg of spring lamb
5 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon sea salt flakes
2 - 3 sprigs fresh rosemary (lightly rinsed to remove any dust)
2 tablespoon soft butter
3 tablespoon plain flour
1 small glass of white wine
750 ml (3 cups) lamb or chicken stock
1 teaspoon Redcurrant jelly (optional)

How to Make It:

1.Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/ gas mark 5.

2.A couple of hours (or even the night before) remove the lamb from the refrigerator and put into a cool but not cold, place. Always cook the lamb at room temperature, cooking straight from the fridge means the outside of the meat will be cooked long before the center.

3.Cut the garlic cloves into tiny slivers.

4.Dry the lamb leg all over with kitchen paper. Then using a small sharp knife, make tiny incisions into the fat of the lamb making sure not to pierce the meat, you are only making small pockets to slip the garlic into. Pop a sliver of garlic into each opening.

5.Pour the oil over the lamb and massage over the whole leg then sprinkle with the sea salt.

6.Put the lamb into a roomy roasting tray, lay the Rosemary on the top and put into the center of the hot oven and cook for 1 ½ hours, check from tine to time to make sure the lamb is not burning or cooking too fast on the outside. If so, either reduce the heat of the oven slightly (some ovens run hotter than normal especially when a little older) or, cover loosely with foil.

7.Mix the butter with the flour to form a thick paste. Put into the fridge.

8.Remove the lamb from the oven, place onto a carving plate or dish and cover with foil. Leave the lamb to rest in a warm (but not hot) place for 20 minutes.

Make the Gravy:

1.Throw away the rosemary from the roasting tin, and tip away any excess fat. Place the roasting tin over medium heat on the stove top. Bring the meat juices to hot then tip in the wine and stir well with a wooden spoon to collect up any burnt on flavorings.

2.Add the stock and bring to a boil then pour through a sieve into a saucepan, bring back to the boil and reduce by one-third. Take the butter-flour paste from the fridge, whisk small pieces into the boiling gravy until the thickness is to your liking. Finally, stir in the redcurrant jelly if using.

3.Serve the hot gravy with thick slices of the lamb, and freshly made mint sauce alongside a dish of roast potatoes, or Hasslebacks,  and fresh, seasonal vegetables.

NOTE-Lamb is such a tender meat and with many different cuts, lends itself so beautifully to different forms of cooking such as braising, pan frying and long, slow cooking for the less tender cuts such as shoulder or neck.

Roasting, though, is the method of choice for the leg. This can be quick or you can use the long method which rests the lamb for oodles of time, wrapped in a blanket Though many shy away from this, afraid the lamb will not be cooked properly, this creates the most tender lamb ever). The quicker method will still take a few hours depending on the size of the leg.

Lamb is a good bedfellow with several aromatics including rosemary, garlic, parsley, and mint so use them when you can

The recipe below is for a leg of lamb with the bone in, having the bone there helps in the cooking of the lamb by retaining heat during resting, it also helps with flavor. Many prefer the bone removed as it makes carving easier. You choose, but preference would always be to keep it in.

Homemade Roast Beef

Ingredients:

1 beef roast; fat trimmed
4 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs balsamic vinegar
Salt
Pepper

Directions:

1.Preheat the oven to 375 F.

2.In a bowl, mix in some salt, pepper, and the balsamic vinegar. Pour the marinade over the beef, rubbing it all around the roast.

3.Take a skillet and heat some oil on medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot enough, put in the beef and sear it all around.

4.Then, take the skillet and put it in the oven and let it bake for 40-45 minutes. Remove and let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.