Cherry Smoked Rib Roast

Having written about enjoying prime rib at Lawry’s and elsewhere, I thought this week, I would share my adventures in smoking my own rib roast. I’ve made one before, but this is the first time I took photos to document the process.

We started with a three pound rib roast, purchased from Trader Joe’s. (Not technically “prime rib,” since it wasn’t USDA Prime. But still really good.)

About an hour before I started making it, I took it out of the refrigerator to let it come to room temperature. About 20 minutes before I was ready to start cooking, I heated the smoker up to 235 degrees, and put some cherrywood chips in.

Although I was using the cherry-smoked prime rib recipe from Jeff Phillips’ Smoking Meat (source of last week’s hot wings recipe), I didn’t actually bother to review the recipe beforehand, and completely forgot that I was supposed to make a rub for the beef. For some reason, I had it in my head that Trader Joe’s sold it already seasoned.

Yes, that is Rumplestilskin sitting in the background. Rest assured, no food ever touches areas that the cats have been unless we've had a chance to clean. But it's hard keeping them out of the kitchen altogether.

Fortunately, we had an emergency rub in the pantry: Rub With Love’s all-purpose BBQ rub. So I smeared the whole thing with oil and coated it with that rub.

Once the meat was prepared, I inserted our Thermoworks Smoke thermometer probe into it. I love the Smoke. Not only is it super-accurate, not only does it have jacks for two probes, so you can monitor two separate pieces of meat or whatever at the same time, it also has a remote monitor, connected via radio waves. So I can keep the remote with me in the house and see how the meat is doing without having to go out to the smoker and check constantly.

Yes, that is the edge of Rumplestilskin's tale in the photo. The rub proved to be pretty popular with the cat's noses.

Once the meat went it, it took about two and a half hours to reach 130 degrees. Every hour, I sprayed it with cherry juice from a spray bottle. I didn’t spray a ton; just enough to keep it from getting dry. 

Once it hit 130, I removed it from the smoker and let it rest about 20 minutes or so. It wasn’t a specific choice to let it rest that long; that’s just how long it took us to make the au jus (from a mix) and the whipped cream horseradish (from the Lawry’s web site).

Once everything else was done, I cut off the netting and sliced off the end piece. Neither my wife nor I particularly wanted the end, since it would have been slightly more cooked than the rest. However, the inside of the roast looked gorgeous.

I sliced a couple of 3/4 inch slices (give or take) for my wife and I. On impulse, I also threw the end piece onto my plate. I knew I would regret eating it later, but it looked so beautiful, I couldn’t let it go to waste. So I put it on my plate.

While the meat wasn’t quite as tender as we find at Lawry’s or the Ranch House, it was still pretty tender. Perhaps more importantly, the flavor was delicious. It had a nice, smoky, sweet flavor. I don’t know how much of the flavor came from the wood and how much from the cherry juice; it didn’t have a particular cherry flavor to it, so I’m guessing mostly the wood. 

I’m really glad I took the end piece, because the smoky flavor was more intense all the way through. Of course, essentially two slices of beef was way too much for me, but it tasted so good, I couldn’t stop eating.

And that’s it for this week! See you next week!