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Tip of the Sirloin, or Rib Roast
IT is easier to carve this joint by cutting across the ribs, parallel with the backbone, but that is cutting with the grain; and meat, especially beef, seems more tender if cut across the grain.
Place it on the platter with the backbone at the right. If the backbones be not removed before cooking, place the fork in the middle and cut close to the backbone down to the ribs. Shave off the thick, gristly cord near the backbone, as this, if left on, interferes with cutting thin slices. Then cut, from the side nearest you, thin uniform slices parallel with the ribs. Run the knife under and separate them from the bone. Many prefer to remove the bone and skewer the meat into a roll before cooking. It may then be laid, flesh down, on the dish, and carved across the top horizontally in thin slices; or if you find it easier, place it with the skin surface up, and carve down from the flesh side nearest you.
This style of serving is generally preferred, but there are advantages in retaining the bone; for the thin end when rolled under is not cooked to such a nice degree of crispness, and the slices are usually larger than desired. Again, the ribs, by keeping the meat in position, secure for it a clean cut, and not one broken and jagged, and the thin end may be served or not, as you please.
The most technical page in the carving book, and it is honest about the trade-off it faces. Cutting parallel with the ribs is much easier and runs with the grain; cutting across the grain is harder and gives better meat.
- What this joint isA run of ribs with the backbone along one side — a standing rib roast, sold as rib roast, prime rib, ribeye roast, or boned and rolled. The page pairs the two names in its title because both present the carver with the same problem and the same two choices.
- The gristly cordRunning the length of the joint near the backbone is a tough elastic sheet. The page says to shave it off before slicing and that is right: it will not cut, it drags the knife sideways, and any slice taken through it comes away ragged.
- Bone in or boned and rolledThe page sets out both and gives the honest case for each. Boned and rolled is far easier to carve and gives neat slices, but the thin end tucked inside never crisps and the slices come out larger than anybody wants. Bone-in holds its shape and cuts clean against the ribs, and the thin end can be served or not as you choose.
- Backbone at the rightThe instruction is written for a right-handed carver standing at one end of the platter, fork planted in the middle, knife working toward himself. Much of this page is choreography rather than geometry, and it reads more clearly if you stand up and mime it.
- Rest itThe one thing the page does not say. A rib roast wants twenty minutes or more off the heat before a knife touches it. A good deal of the raggedness the page is trying to avoid comes from carving a joint still too hot inside to hold together.
- The knifeLong, thin, straight, and sharpened before the meat comes out of the oven rather than over the platter. A fork with a guard and a board with a trough do the rest. The page assumes a platter, which means the juices collect there and go back into the slices.
This book exists because the joint was brought to the table whole and taken apart in front of everybody. Carving was a social performance expected of the head of a household, taught and judged like handwriting, and a manual could sell on that anxiety alone — which is why a page about a rib roast reads less like a recipe than like a set of stage directions, with the platter squared up, the backbone to the right, the fork placed at the middle and the slices lifted off in order. Two changes ended the skill. Meat began to be sold in portions rather than in joints, and service moved off the table and into the kitchen, so the host no longer stood up with a knife in front of the guests. The honest discussion on this page about whether to keep the bone or have it taken out before cooking is a glimpse of the moment the decision still belonged to the household rather than to the counter it was bought from.