Salt Crusted Prime Rib

I’ve always wanted to try this, so when Loblaws had prime rib at an obscenely reasonable price, it was destiny. The first time I had salt crusted prime rib was in a tiny little town in Arizona. I was working at a copper mine in Bagdad and staying in Wickenburg (SP? but really who cares).  Bagdad was a company town with one resto that served something that almost resembled food.

So we ate most of our meals in Wickenburg, which had a few Mexican joints and one hell of a steak house. Just for the sake of story telling I should mention that Arizona is a hard place to raise cattle. It takes a lot of land – more than you would think is reasonable. Since most of what grows is inedible you need the room to feed each cow.  Now if it hasn’t rained and what little grass is usually available for grazing is gone,  they burn the needles off the cactus’ and the cows make due with that….its a lot of work but its damn good beef… but back to the steak. It may have because I was tired of Mexican and Denny’s but when my 23 oz prime rib arrived I was floored. This was the most beautiful, tasty, lovely steak I have ever had. It was tender, delicious and as big as my head..

So this was my attempt to recreate  this experience. The crust is a little different than the typical “season the roast and then bury it in salt.”  This approach was inspired by a recipe in Fine Cooking, they made the crust into a dough and surrounded the roast in it. The jury is out on which is best.

So here goes:

For the Crust:

• 2 cups Kosher salt
• 2 large egg whites
• 2 Tbs cracked pepper (coarse)
• 3 Tbs chopped fresh thyme
• 3 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
• 3 Tbs chopped flat leaf parsley
• 5-6 cloves of garlic
• a decent hunk of fresh grated horseradish (see picture)
• 3 cups of never bleached flour

Combine the salt, egg whites, herbs, garlic, horseradish, pepper, and one cup of cold water in a stand mixer. Mix until blended and add flour until it is the consistency of Play-Doh:

Note: Do not taste it – it looks and smells much better than it tastes.

Sear your roast on all sides and then roll out your crust and surround the beef in it. Throw the beef in the oven for an hour or so, rip the crust off and let the beef rest. Discard your drippings they are inedible.  If you don’t believe me have a nibble of the crust and then taste the drippings.

Since the drippings are closer to a salt lick than a gravy base, pan gravy is out of the question. I had onion soup left over from the previous night’s dinner. So I added equal parts red wine and soup to a sauce pan, reduced it by a quarter and thickened with a brown roux. We served the meal with asparagus with a lemon and herb hollandaise, garlic rapini and roasted garlic mash.

I left the camera on manual focus, so all the pictures of the plated meal are a little blurry (bourbon vision). Use your imagination.