Prime rib is a treat that most of us enjoy when we go out to dinner at a nice steak house or fine dining restaurant. But did you know that prime rib is easy to cook yourself at home?

There is no reason you should deprive yourself of prime rib except on those occasions when you go out to dinner. Surprise your family by cooking your own prime rib dinner, just like you get in the restaurant.

Choosing the Meat

Never skimp on quality when you’re buying meat. Go to the very best butcher shop you can afford for a prime rib roast. You will be charged by the pound for your roast, and you want to be cooking a prime rib roast that has at least three ribs attached. If you’re cooking for a small family of two or three people, you’re going to have some prime rib left over, so plan ahead on how you will use it up. Better yet, invite someone over for dinner and treat them to a lovely meal of home cooked prime rib.

Preparing the Meat

Leave the meat as it is when you bring it home from the butcher shop. You may be tempted to trim the fat, but when you are cooking prime rib, that fat will keep the meat moist and tender. Let each of your guests trim the fat off their own meat as they see fit, but don’t trim the meat before you cook it.

Prepare the meat by salting any meat that is not protected by fat with large crystals or flakes of salt, such as kosher salt or margarita salt. Do not use iodized salt or sea salt, or the meat will just taste salty without being protected. If the salt is not sticking to the meat, moisten the meat with water or red wine.

Cooking Your Prime Rib Roast

Preheat your oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Place your prime rib roast on a rack in a roasting pan, stick a meat thermometer into it, put it in the oven, close the door and wait. Cooking prime rib takes a few hours at a minimum, so make sure you can spend a few hours at home while the roast cooks.

Cook the roast until the internal temperature reaches 110 degrees for medium rare roast beef to 120 at the max, for well done, almost charred meat. Anything cooler isn’t safe to eat; anything hotter is too dry to enjoy. 

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The most confusing thing about cooking prime rib, for most cooks, is that prime rib cooking times vary significantly depending on many factors.  Variables that can affect prime rib cooking times include the thickness of the meat, the amount of fat on the cut, the moisture content of the meat, and the temperature of the meat when it’s placed into the oven. 

How Long to Cook Prime Rib

There are many charts and resources that will give you approximate prime rib cooking times based on the weight of the cut, but these are educated guesses at best.  While you can take approximate prime rib cooking times and make them work for you, the best way to cook your prime rib is to use a sturdy, reliable, and high quality meat thermometer.

A meat thermometer with a heat-proof probe that stays in the meat the entire time it’s being cooked is the most accurate way to gauge when your prime rib is done.  Forget trying to calculate prime rib cooking times or attempting to tell by sight or smell when it is done.  The only way to be sure it’s done is to use a reliable meat thermometer.

Even when you’re using a meat thermometer, your prime rib cooking times will still vary significantly based on the factors mentioned above.  However, knowing what temperature your prime rib is at will tell you the exact moment to pull it out of the oven.  This will be anywhere from 110 to 120 degrees, depending on how well done you like your meat.  After pulling the pan out of the oven, let it sit for a good 10 to 15 minutes.  The temperature will continue to increase for a few minutes and will then stop rising.  Then, and only then, your prime rib is ready to be served.

The well-seasoned cooks in your family will no doubt have all sorts of tricks for calculating prime rib cooking times that they’ll happily share with you, but if you want your meat cooked perfectly every time, stick with the thermometer method.  You may even impress those experienced cooks and win them over to your method.

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