Five salt dinner 2.3 - Salt-Crusted Prime Rib Finale

I had expected the prime rib to take about four hours, based on the weight. However, I was judging doneness based on the internal temperature, rather than time, and three hours into the process it hit 130 degrees - the bottom end of medium rare, for prime rib. (As an aside, this is the first time I have used the thermometer for any large project, and I absolutely loved it. I never had to open the oven, touch the meat, or do anything else that might disturb the cooking, and I could feel comfortable the whole time that I knew exactly what was going on.)

There was definitely a problem, though - carryover heat. The purpose of the salt crust is to absorb the heat of the oven and re-transfer it to the meat in a controlled fashion. And while the salt never got particularly hot (it was warm to the touch out of the oven) it kept cooking that meat for about an hour after I took it out of the oven. I was chewing my fingernails, as I watched the thermometer creep from 130 (when I took it out) all the way up to 150 (when I finally served it.) Part of the problem there is the fact that I had thought it would take about four hours - so I put it in at 3:00, planning on taking it out at 7:00, resting it for a half hour and serving it at 7:30. Instead, I took it out at 6:00, and it sat for an hour and a half.


Oh, also - I totally screwed up the placement of the roast - whenever you're cooking any sort of roast, the fatty part needs to be on top, so the fat can drip down during cooking. I'm not sure HOW I could have worked that out - the roast's shape would have made it really difficult to coat in the salt mixture if I turned it the other direction - but I wasn't thinking when I set this up, and put the fat on the bottom. So, if you do this yourself, don't be dumb like me.

In any case, it came out fine - a bit overdone (I think rare or maybe medium rare are really the only temperatures that do prime rib justice; this was solidly in the medium range, with a pinkish center. (This picture makes it look more overdone than it actually was, though.)

Guess what? It still tasted amazing, though.

But wait! I'm skipping right past the fun part!

Honestly, if you look at the first picture in this post, you'll notice that the crust had fallen apart towards the bottom of the pan - if I had wanted to, I could have just lifted the top crust off of the meat. But this was so much cooler.

Carving was also an issue; I've never cooked a prime rib before, and I wasn't familiar with how the bones are configured. What I had was three ribs off of a cow, connected by a big piece of what one assumes is vertebra, slightly deeper in the meat.

While I was dithering and trying to form a carving plan, my friend Laura stepped up to the plate and started slicing. She worked the knife around the vertebrae, creating opening up a space so that when she parallel to the ribs, she could then pull the whole bony section right off. (It's still sitting in my fridge. When my wife leaves, and I feel like I am safe acting like a caveman, I am going to pick those bones clean.)

All in all, I really liked the salt crust - I would definitely do this again, circumstances permitting. I think the presentation is really cool, the crust does a good job of keeping the meat evenly cooked, traps juices in and really lets the natural flavor of this great cut of meat come out. If I did it again, I would definitely try the crust I suggested in an earlier part of this. Also, I would take it out of the oven at 115 or 120, depending on how well done I wanted it. It was a great centerpiece to a really nice meal... and as a bonus, I've got about two prime rib lunches left over!

Five salt dinner 2.2 - Salt-Crusted Prime Rib 2

(If you couldn't tell by the title, this is the third post in a series about the dinner I'm cooking this evening.)

When we last left our hero, he was having two problems - first, his salt mixture was not a good enough consistency to stick to the sides of the roast, and second, the amount of salt was probably insufficient to coat the entire roast.

I tried some half-assery for a while - piling the salt up, scraping some off the bottom... nothing really worked particularly well. Not only that, but the more I looked at the crust, the more I realized that I really expected something a bit more solid - the rock salt left a bunch of openings on the surface.

What was really called for here was some sort of spackle. I don't own any edible spackle, which means that this was a job for makin' it up - something that I enjoy doing. Okay, theory - if rock salt + egg are supposed to make my "cement", kosher salt + egg should make a decent spackle. Only one way to find out - otherwise I'm heading to the supermarket for another box of rock salt.

I took the whites of two more eggs, (running out of eggs!) and added salt until it turned into a paste. I started out with a fairly large amount...

And kept mixing, adding, mixing, adding, until I got the consistency I wanted. What I wanted, as it turns out, was about a pound and a quarter of kosher salt and two egg whites. At that point, the mixture was firm enough that it was capable of standing on its own. I made a snowball, went and washed my hands, and when I came back it was still standing.

Never let it be said that I haven't made a snowball out of salt.

Now, it was time to start spackling. Everywhere that looked like it needed more crust got some salt. I finished up with what I had made, and decided I still needed a little more, partly for aesthetic purposes, partly for cooking ones. I got out two more eggs, and mixed in the last of the box of kosher salt.

Don't eat the yellow snow.

Remind me never to do anything for aesthetic purposes - I had gotten some yolk in the mix, and as a result... well, you can see for yourself. In the end, this is what I wound up with:

 

I will be the first to admit that it is not the prettiest thing that I have ever seen. But still, once it got into the oven, I felt hopeful about the eventual result.

I'll know in about four hours!

If I had this to do over again, I would start with eight eggs, three pounds of kosher salt and three pounds of rock salt, and mix in extra kosher as necessary. I feel like that way you'd get the consistency of the kosher salt, but at the same time the solidity and volume of the rock salt. As it is, I've basically got a layer of kosher covering a layer of rock, which doesn't seem efficient.

I've also got a screaming baby in the other room. Not upset, not angry - just a baby who has decided that now is screaming time. This is why I haven't been posting much. Well, four dishes to go - I'll keep updating as things go in the oven.

Coming, my little master...

Five salt dinner 2.1 - Salt-Crusted Prime Rib 1

Warts and all cooking, folks, that's what you'll get when you roll with me. This is the story of how I screwed up the main course. I'll tell you in about five hours if what I did to fix it actually worked.


When it comes to meat, I'm one of God's grillers. I like the grill. Meat? Fire. Fire? Meat. They love each other, I love both of them, and without a whole lot of effort you can make something that generally tastes amazing. So the opportunity cost of cooking meat NOT on the grill is high. It's hard, and the results are uncertain. However, in keeping with the theme of the week, I figured I needed to do something other than just slap a little kosher salt on a tenderloin and throw it on the grill. So I decided to salt-crust a prime rib.

Now, salt crusting something is different from salt encrusting something, in the same way a jewel encrusted sword is different from one surrounded in a giant diamond. As I talked about the other day, when you're cooking something IN salt, you're using the salt as a medium, not as a flavoring. Let me show you.

Here are my working parts:

If you ever do this, do me a favor and actually take the time to wrap the edges of the foil around the pan. 

Trust me - it'll be worth the effort.

I've got a 3-bone prime rib, four pounds of rock salt, the whites of four eggs, several mixing bowls, a pan lined with heavy foil, a little bowl full of salt and pepper, and a digital probe thermometer. (The eggs are in the bowl nested in the larger one. I have a picture that actually allows you to see the eggs... but I noticed that picture also features my socks on the floor in the background. The kitchen seemed like a better call.)

Okay. Step one is easy - that little bowl is full of sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Apply liberally.

There are those who would say I do almost everything liberally.

Step two, we're making the crust. Now, the recipe that I read called for five CUPS of egg whites, beaten stiff. (For those who don't know what that means - it does not mean that the eggs are BDSM freaks. For this recipe, it's sufficient to just go at them with a fork until they're frothy.) That couldn't possibly be right, so I started with the whites of four eggs - about half a cup - and eventually added another four in.

This is my picture of eggs and rock salt.

Now, add the two together, a bit at a time, and mix.

NOTE: Rock salt is basically two things - a rock, and salt. It's hard, and it's sharp, and it's salty. Here's what mixing hard sharpy salt rocks with your hand feels like:

OW.

Put on a glove. Like this.

I learn these things the hard way so that you don't have to, folks!

Your goal here is to get a consistency that you can basically pack a snowball with. My problem was, the best I got to was this:

 

Wet and sticky, but not quite where I wanted to be. I figured it was probably going to be enough, so I decided to get the party started. First, you lay the bottom part of the crust down in the roasting pan:

 

Then, put the meat down, and pack the salt mixture all around it.

 

Before you start on the sides, insert the meat thermometer, then pack the salt around it.

Now, here's where my problems started. I was wrong - that wet, gloppy mass of rock salt WASN'T, in fact, strong enough to stick to the sides of the roast; most of it wound up down in the pan. And four pounds of rock salt wasn't really going to be enough to coat the whole piece of meat. Unfortunately for you, my son just woke up - and from the smell, he's been dreaming about toxic waste. In part 2, I'll tell you what I did to solve those problems.

Oh dear God, Benjamin.