Smoked Prime Rib

**Post written by The BBQ Brothers. For all meat prep, grill set up, temperature and humidity control, recommended tools, and techniques for The BBQ Brothers recipes, check out The BBQ Brothers Beginner’s Guide To Grilling first, then get to cookin! 

This recipe actually doesn’t use The BBQ Brothers All Purpose BBQ Rub, instead, you will rub with montreal seasoning only.

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SMOKED PRIME RIB

There is a reason that Prime Rib is known as the King of Meats. So for this past Mothers day, and honoring the Queens of our families, we decided to cook up a royal meal.

Quick—what is the best steak cut you can think of? Well if you answered right you said a nice, thick, well marbled, ribeye. Well what if I told you that a prime rib is just a ribeye that is big enough to be a roast? This is the dish that you see so often in all of those really upscale joints where the waiters are dressed in suits and ties and probably make more per hour than your average attorney (and are just a bit less pompous and arrogant).

After all of that this may sound like it’s going to be an over complicated, delicate dish that you have to babysit all day. Well you’d be wrong. Even though we are looking at a cut of meat that is vastly different from the tough traditional BBQ cuts, prime rib holds up wonderfully to the tried and true BBQ style that you’re used to.So as usual we are going to start with a rub. For this particular roast we just used Montreal seasoning, but you can use pretty much any rub that works for you. I also really like using our traditional rub on beef with one change being to double up on the black pepper. If there is one thing that beef loves it is black pepper and you really can’t go too heavy with it.

You don’t want to be shy with how much rub you coat the outside of your roast with. You don’t have to worry about overpowering the beefy flavor that you want to stand out. First of all, this roast is already going to have an intense beefy flavor due to the cut and all of the marbling that is associated with it. And second, when you do slice this up you’re only going to have the thin outer layer of your piece covered with the rub. So make sure you get some good flavor!!

As usual you’re going to want to rub these at least an hour or two before putting it on the pit (up to the night before). Also, our prime rib came wrapped in butcher’s twine, but you can also ask your butcher to do it for you.

For this cook we were over at our dad’s house using his fancy dancy Big Green Egg, but you can use any grill using our beginners guide to BBQ. Just make sure that as usual you use indirect heat. Once you get set up you’re going to want to get your temperature holding steady at 225-240F.For this cook we used oak chunks for our smoke. For beef you can get a little more adventurous with your woods since generally beef will hold up better than pork or chicken. With that being said, you never want to over smoke your meat, especially with a cut that stands so well on its own. A chunk or two (or a couple handfuls of chips) is more than enough for this cook.

So once you get your temperature holding steady it’s time to place your roast onto your grill/smoker. Just like anything else we want to put our temperature probe in and monitor the temp of the grill and the meat as we go. At this point it’s time to either get to work on your side dishes or (if you’re like me) sit back, crank the tunes and drink a beer or five. (Especially since Caitlin was already making rosemary and blue cheese mashed potatoes.)

For this cook, temperature is going to be of paramount importance for us because, unlike regular BBQ cuts, we really aren’t looking to break down connective tissues or make sure the meat gets tender. We want to make sure that we don’t overcook this meat and get it off while it’s as juicy and delicious as possible. For my family that means on the lower end of medium rare so about 130-135F. So that means we want to take it off at around 125-128F since we are going to get some carry over cooking. You want to make sure that you rest the meat for at least 30 minutes to make sure that the juices redistribute and you don’t end up with all of it on your cutting board rather than in the meat. Last but not least comes the carving of your roast. As you can imagine it’s not rocket science. You’ll want to cut it to about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inches to make sure that keep those juices in and it doesn’t dry out. You also want to carve as close to the time you eat as possible. From the second that you slice into that roast it’s going to start losing moisture, so don’t waste it!! That’s the reason those fancy restaurants cut it right by the table!So that’s it. Grab your fanciest beer koozie and pull out the cloth napkins because tonight you eat like a king!

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So let us know what you think. Did this recipe smoke the competition or go up in flames?