Herb Crusted Prime Rib

Looking for something extra special to make for your next get together? If so, you need this recipe for herb crusted prime rib. It may sound intimidating but it is very easy to make and the flavor you get with the rub combined with the compound butter on top of prime rib is out of this world.

Let me just start by saying Prime Rib has always held a special place in my heart. If I am out to eat at a steak place, I will almost always order one. Suprisingly, I had never thought about trying to cook one at home on the grill until recently. We were looking for something new to have for our annual Christmas meal and I noticed a bunch of people in some of the bbq groups I belong to discussing cooking prime rib on the grill. I knew then that I needed ot try this out. I was definitely not going to let Christmas dinner be the first time making this so I did a trial run this past week and I was amazed by the results. Not only was this meal as good, if not better than, any prime rib I have had in restaurants but it was super easy to make. Other than applying the compound butter and rub, the only other prep work involved is trimming and tying up the roast to make sure it stays together while it is cooking. Most times when you buy these, it will have already been done for you. If it has not, you can ask and the butcher will do this for you.

Cooking Basics

There are not too many steps involved with cooking this meal. I am going to skip over the part about trimming since these usually come prepared for you but if you need to do this, you can just do a search online. There are plenty of videos demonstrating this process and it is not too complicated.

The first step you need to complete is making the compound butter. The recipe for this is listed below. You will need fresh sage, rosemary, thyme and garlic for this and they all need to be chopped into small pieces. Once you have all the spices prepared, you will mix it in with the butter and set that aside while you put the rub on the roast.

I used Pit Boss Prime Beef and Brisket rub to put on the roast. Feel free to use whatever your favorite beef rub may be. If you do not have anything on hand, you can make your own rub by combining equal parts salt, pepper, and garlic powder. This is the base for most rubs you can buy in a store and is really all the flavor you need. Once you have the rub made or chosen the one you want to use, you are ready to prep the roast.

You will season generously on all sides of this roast and just pat it on to make sure it sticks. Sometimes I use oil as a binder but I didn’t in this case because after the rub is applied, you are going to be adding the butter over this. I wanted to make sure the butter would stick to the surface of the meat and unsure if the oil would hinder this process. Once the rub has been applied, it is time to frost your meat cake. This is really the best analogy for the next step I can think of. Using a knife or spatula, you will cover all sides of the roast other than the bones with your compound butter. You dont want any part of the meat showing. Once this step has been completed, you are ready to cook.

At this point, the hard work is done. You will want to preheat your grill or smoker to 225 for this meal. If using a grill, be sure to use indirect heat to cook this. If you are using a smoker, I used hickory for this and that worked nice. I have also heard cherry is a good wood to use. You will want to put your roast on an oven rack and place it over a pan to catch the drippings as this cooks. You can use these to make an au jus to go with this meal if you so desire. Once the roast is on the grill or smoker, the only thing you need to do is to rotate it 180 degrees about halfway through the cook so that the roast cooks evenly. You will be cooking this to the internal temperatrue for how well done you like it. Medium rare will be 130 degrees, Medium would go until 140, and Medium Well would go to 150.

When you take your prime rib off you will want to go put an aluminum foil tent over it to rest for at least a half hour. If you need to wait longer, you can wrap it in aluminum foil, place a towel around it, and put it in a cooler. The roast would be ok for a few hours using this second method. When the rest is over, you are ready to slice. I cooked my prime rib to 130 and you can see below how it turned out afetr slicing.

Final Thoughts

Although I loved how this meal tasted, there were a couple variations I would like to try next time to see how it turns out.

• Searing - I did not sear the roast after cooking it and I found that even though I liked the flavor, I wish it had a little more crunch to the crust. The next time I make this I will set the grill to 400 degress and after the rest, I will throw this back on to sear the outside for a couple minutes.
• Compound butter - I loved the flavor this created on the prime rib but it was a little bit of a pain to get the rib entirely covered in this. I wanted the drippings to make au jus but I might try using olive oil next time instead to see how that turns out. To do this alternative, you just coat the roast in olive oil, mix together all the herbs, and sprinkle them all over the roast ot create the crust.

Recipe