Smoked Standing Rib Roast

My dearest Hubby is a meat and potatoes person.  I guess I’m glad that we live in a state where both potatoes and meat are abundant, pretty much all year long.  During summer time, Hubby likes grill steak, smoke briskets, chuck roast, pulled pork, ribs, you name it.  But during this past winter, he has not been able to grill anything outside.  The weather was way too cold to get the grill hot, and it was impossible to maintain the heat inside the grill/smoker without burning tons of charcoal.  So of course, at the first sign of nice weather in Houston, he immediately formulated this thought that he would smoke a Standing Rib Roast.  Usually we only have this Smoked Standing Rib Roast for special occasions, and, last weekend, we had one.

Katie had come down to Houston two weekends ago for her cousin’s wedding.  We did not get to see her much during the first two days, but on Sunday, she was ours.  Like mother hens, we kinda bombarded Katie with home cooked meals.  Salsa Fresca was made so she could snack during the day… Homemade Mayo smothered the Caprese Burger for lunch…  For dinner, we had the Smoked Standing Rib Roast and Roasted Fruits and Vegetables, and for dessert, Brownies swirls with Chevre (from Bobby Flay’s brownies throwdown episode – will post later).

I now understand how my mom feels when I go home.  She will create a menu for lunch and dinner for us while we are there, and she will make sure that we get to eat what we want.  That’s what happens when we live far apart – on the few times we see each other, we have this over abundance of nurturing instinct pouring out, and of course, how do we do it?  By feeding our loved ones!

So I had told Hubby that I would like to blog about this Rib Roast.  However, when I was busy chatting with Katie, Hubby went ahead and seasoned the Rib Roast!!  I told him that “Now I can’t blog about it because you already seasoned it!”  Ha…. I know, I am somewhat a perfectionist – if you will – when it comes to blogging.  Somewhat.  I have several materials that I could write about, but I don’t have good final pictures.  So, those materials are just waiting in a pending folder, waiting until such time that I can make the same thing again – and perhaps I will get good final pictures of the product.  After all, part of the fun in reading food blogs is looking at the pictures of the food.  We want the food to look so real, that it looks so close to you, that you can see every bit of the morsels.  The more pictures you have, the more fun you have…  Don’t you agree with me?

So I was a bit miffed when I found out that he started without me.  So, no food prop here folks.  We go straight into the prepping the Rib Roast.  You would need the Rib Roast, salt, white and black peppers, and garlic powder.  Very simple.  The seasoning mix was adapted from Paula Deen’s House Seasoning.  Paula’s doesn’t use the white pepper, but since we have it, we just added the white pepper to the mix.

 

 

So once Hubby finished seasoning the top, he put the Rib Roast on its side.  Isn’t this piece of meat impressive?  This piece of meat was about 6.5 pounds.  Typically each bone will contain about 2 pounds in weight.  This whole chunk had 3 pieces of bones.

 

 

Then I sprinkled the seasoning to cover the sides – just lightly, since we didn’t want to overwhelm the meat with seasoning – we wanted to be able to taste the meat as well.

 

 

Then after all sides were seasoned, then it was ready to be smoked.  At this time, Hubby was preparing the smoker to be ready.  If you want to read on how to prepare a smoker, you can read it here.

 

 

Then the rib roast went into the smoker for about three hours.

 

 

When it was finished, it looked like this.

 

 

Impressive?

 

 

This is another angle…

 

 

Then Hubby transferred it to a cutting board and covered it with foil, letting it rest so that the juices would redistribute through out the Roast and give us a wonderful moist Roast.  This was a very important step!  To read more about letting meat rest after being cooked, click here.

 

 

After about twenty minutes or so… the Roast was ready to be sliced.  Isn’t this delicious looking?

 

 

After slicing off the bones, then Hubby sliced the Roast into thin slices.

 

 

You can see the pinkish – smoke ring on the outer edge of the Roast…

 

 

Then the inside of the roast was perfectly done – not too raw, not over-cooked.

 

 

Served it immediately, otherwise the meat will start to get dry (see the picture below, compared to the fresh sliced above), alongside with Roasted Fruits and Vegetables, a dollop of horseradish sauce and a piece of Ciabatta bread, it was a hearty meal.

 

 

Or, you could serve it with just a plain baked potato and Roasted Green Beans, it was equally delicious.  (This picture was taken in 2007, long before I started blogging.  I thought I will share this picture with you too! :))

 

 

Print recipe here.

How to smoke Standing Rib Roast

1.    Let the Rib Roast stand in room temperature for about half an hour to take the chill off.
2.    Prepare your smoker to 250F.
3.    Rub seasonings over surfaces of roast.
4.    Place roast, bone side down in shallow roasting pan, put inside the smoker for 3 hours.  Maintain the smoker’s temperature around 250F.
5.    Cook until the internal temperature is about 125F for medium rare. When roast has reached the desired temperature, place in 400F oven for 20 minutes to crisp the exterior.
6.    Transfer to cutting board, cover with aluminum foil and let rest for 20 minutes.
7.    Slice roast and serve.