The Pioneer Woman host, her husband, Ladd, and their kids go to great lengths on Christmas Eve so they can sleep in and do nothing the next day. Ladd gives the cattle a double feeding, and Ree serves her big holiday meal, a prime rib feast. “When the meat comes to the table, that’s the moment we all get excited about Christmas,” she says. Ree keeps the rest of the menu simple: Yorkshire pudding (made with beef drippings), roasted potatoes, and mushrooms cooked in red wine. “It’s a Christmas Eve tradition everybody loves,” she says.
| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 2 hr 40 min |
| Prep: | 25 min |
| Inactive: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 2 hr |
| Yield: | 12 to 18 servings |
| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 2 hr 40 min |
| Prep: | 25 min |
| Inactive: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 2 hr |
| Yield: | 12 to 18 servings |
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons tricolor peppercorns (or any peppercorns)
- 3 sprigs rosemary
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 1/3 cup kosher salt
- 8 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 10-to-14-pound boneless rib-eye roast
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- Yorkshire Pudding, for serving, recipe follows
- 5 large eggs
- 1 cup half-and-half
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- Kosher salt
- Drippings from the prime rib
Instructions
- Move the oven rack to the bottom and preheat the oven to 500 degrees F, then start with the seasoning: Grab the peppercorns and throw them in a big plastic bag and pound them with a rolling pin to break them open. Pull the leaves off the rosemary and thyme sprigs. Throw the crushed peppercorns into a bowl with the salt and herb leaves and add the minced garlic. Use your fingers to toss it all together, then set it aside.
- Place the beef, fat-side up, on a rack in a roasting pan. Drizzle the olive oil all over the surface and rub it in with your hands. Sprinkle the peppercorn-herb-salt mixture all over the surface of the beef, pressing it lightly with your hands.
- Roast the beef 45 minutes for the first stage. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees F and insert a meat thermometer sideways into the roast. Roast the beef an additional 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, or until the thermometer registers 120 degrees F to 135 degrees F in the center for medium rare. (The meat will continue to cook for a bit after you remove it from the oven.)
- Remove the beef from the rack and let it rest about 15 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute throughout the meat. When you’re ready to serve, carve it into slices of your preferred width.
- Make the batter before removing the prime rib from the oven: Combine the eggs and half-and-half in a bowl and whisk until they’re totally combined. Throw the flour and 2 teaspoons salt into a sifter and sift them straight into the bowl. Whisk until it’s nice and smooth, then refrigerate until the prime rib is ready.
- After the beef is removed from the pan, increase the oven temperature to 450 degrees F. Use a slotted spoon to remove the peppercorns, herbs and excess salt from the drippings. Pour the remaining drippings into a separate container. They should be speckled and lovely!
- Pour a small amount (about 1/2 teaspoon or so) of the drippings into each cup of a standard muffin pan and place the pan in the hot oven for a couple of minutes, or until just before the drippings begin to smoke.
- Carefully remove the pan from the oven and immediately fill the muffin cups about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Bake 13 to 14 minutes, or until they’ve “popped” about as much as they can pop. Serve them in a basket with a pretty napkin right next to the prime rib.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 16 servings |
| Calories | 969 |
| Total Fat | 75 g |
| Saturated Fat | 32 g |
| Carbohydrates | 9 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Sugar | 1 g |
| Protein | 66 g |
| Cholesterol | 295 mg |
| Sodium | 900 mg |
| Serving Size | 1 of 16 servings |
| Calories | 969 |
| Total Fat | 75 g |
| Saturated Fat | 32 g |
| Carbohydrates | 9 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Sugar | 1 g |
| Protein | 66 g |
| Cholesterol | 295 mg |
| Sodium | 900 mg |
Reviews
Made this for Christmas dinner and it was awesome. I did notice a lot of smoke but not enough to warrant a smoke alarm. Was afraid it was going to be too peppery and as I didn’t have a rolling pin in my new winter home, nor a meat thermometer, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. Just decided to pulse the peppercorns in the Vitamix and that is the way I’ll do it from now on for ease. I also used dried rosemary and thyme because I forgot to buy fresh. It was the best prime rib I’ve ever made. It will be my go to recipe for Christmas from now on!
I used Canola oil after reading the reviews. Olive oil will smoke at 500 F. Worked great!
We made this for Christmas and it was amazing! So flavorful and so easy. I’d definitely recommend adding some beef stock to the bottom of the pan to prevent smoking from the olive oil when it starts at such a high temp.
Delicious
Can anyone help with timing if I had a 2-4 lb. roast?
Tested this recipe this week and it turned out perfect. The flavor of the beef along with the herbs and spices notated in the recipe is the best we have tasted in a long time. This recipe is going in my keeper file. Thanks, love your cooking style.
Wow! Wow wow wow! Made this on Christmas for 25 people. Got a 14.4 lb rib roast. I read reviews and noticed how. Couple people said seating it at 500 smoked out their kitchen. I did a self clean of the oven on 12/23 to prevent the smoking and my oven was sparkling clean and it was smoking as ever. We had to open all windows!
This turned out beautifully, and we had so many compliments. That said, we had the smoking issue with an Ina recipe for beef tenderloin years ago, so we switched to a different one of her tenderloin recipes that had us slow roast the tenderloin at 275. That made all of the difference in the world and the tenderloin was still phenomenal. I read a few reviews of Ree’s recipe who suggested slow roasting the prime rib for the same reason, and I will try that next year. Unfortunately, when I opened my oven today on 12/26, there was a good 1/4” of lard that had congealed on the bottom of my oven from the prime rib-remember, I just cleaned my oven on 12/23 and had not used it until the rib. We had to scrape out the lard and do another 5 hour self cleaning to get rid of the black grease stuck to the walls of my blue kitchen aid oven. We will try to either slow roast it next year or sear it on the grill before moving it to the oven for slow roasting. Cleaning the oven twice in three days was not worth it.
Excellent, Excellent, Excellent! Delicious Delicious Delicious! Simple recipe and very flavorful. You must do the Yorkshire pudding with this roast. It is too simple not to. Quite the show stopper.
I don’t know why there are only a few reviews on this…I’ve been using this recipe for 3+ years and it’s awesome. My family won’t let me cook anything else for xmas eve dinner. Yes, the oven smokes ALOT at 500 degrees, but the crust is delicious. I also tried the Yorkshire pudding for kicks and now it’s a must have also.
Let me just start out by saying that the prime rib turned out delicious, BUT, I need to address the reason I gave this recipe 3/5 stars. I STRONGLY disadvise putting your oven at 500 degrees, long story short our smoke alarm went off several times that day and the whole house filled with smoke. No matter how clean your oven is there will be a significant amount of smoke. I recommend slow roasting it at 325 for roughly 15-17 minutes a pound. It may take longer, but at least you don’t have to listen to a screeching smoke alarm and have your eyes sting from the smoke a 500-degree oven will create. But the seasonings were great, and so was the prime rib.