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Rib Roast of Beef
Procure a second cut of rib roast of beef, remove the bones with a sharp knife, roll and skewer it. Before roasting take out the butcher's skewers, unroll, season highly with salt and pepper and a few herbs, if liked; roll again tightly, fastening securely with skewer pins. Place in a pan on a little iron griddle, made for the purpose to keep it just over the water in the pan. Pepper and salt freely, also dredge with flour, and baste every ten or fifteen minutes. Just before the beef is done pour over it haıf a teacup of vinegar. To the gravy put parsley, thyme and minced onion, which should be browned.
A boned, rolled rib roast cooked over a little water in the pan — a method that steams as much as it roasts. A few points of translation before you begin.
- The hinge: temperature, not timeThe original gives no oven heat and no cooking time at all, which was normal when cooks judged by eye. Roast at 325F and pull the meat at 125-130F on an instant-read thermometer for medium-rare, then rest 20 minutes; carryover will take it up several degrees.
- "Second cut"The rib roast was divided by the butcher into the first cut (ribs nearest the loin, the prime end) and the second cut, further along the chuck end — cheaper, a little coarser, more layered with fat and connective tissue. Ask for the chuck end of a bone-in rib roast, or simply buy a boneless rib roast and skip the boning.
- Skewers and stringSkewer pins were metal spikes used to hold a rolled joint closed. Butcher's twine tied at 1½-inch intervals does the job better and comes off more cleanly at the table.
- The griddle over waterThe "little iron griddle" is a roasting rack. The water in the pan below catches drippings and keeps them from scorching, but it also raises humidity and works against a browned crust. A dry pan with a rack gives a better exterior; if you want the pan juices, add a splash of water only in the last half hour.
- A teacup of vinegarA teacup here is roughly 6 fl oz, so half a teacup is about 3 fl oz — 6 tablespoons. Poured over at the end it deglazes and sharpens the drippings rather than seasoning the meat; cider vinegar or red wine vinegar suits beef better than distilled white.
- Dredging with flourFlour on a wet surface will paste and steam. Pat the roast dry, season, and dust lightly — or leave the flour out and use it instead to thicken the gravy afterwards.
- BastingOpening the oven every ten minutes drops the temperature and lengthens the cook. Baste two or three times at most, or not at all; the fat cap on a rib roast bastes itself.
- The gravyBrown the minced onion in a spoonful of the fat before adding it, as the text implies, then add the parsley and thyme off the heat so they keep their scent. Fresh thyme, a teaspoon of leaves; parsley, a small handful chopped.
- YieldFigure about ¾ lb of boneless roast per person as a main course — a 4 lb rolled joint serves about five.
Rib of beef roasted on a rack over a pan of water sits at the point where the open hearth gave way to the closed range. In a spit-roasted joint the dripping fell into a pan below and was ladled back over the meat; when cooking moved into an iron oven, cooks kept the dripping pan and the basting habit, and the water in the pan is often said to have been there to stop the drippings burning in the fiercer, drier heat, though this is inference rather than documented fact. The result was closer to a pot roast than a true roast, and later cookery writers spent a good deal of ink arguing against it. The direction to take out the butcher's skewers reflects a period when the butcher rolled and skewered the joint as a matter of course, and the "second cut" designation o longer make aloud is a reminder that a rib roast was a graded commodity, priced by how near the loin it lay.