With the holiday season here, there’s a good chance there will be more prime rib in our lives—and it might be the only time of year home cooks will attempt to make it themselves. So it’s best to look to restaurant chefs for some tips on how they create this showstopping roast at the center of the holiday table.
Sungchul Shim, the chef behind Manhattan’s Gui Steakhouse—along with Michelin-starred restaurants Mari and Kochi—let Danny Kim behind the scenes to see how he makes a great prime rib. And Kim also visits Wolfgang Birk at Café Riggs where he roasts what he calls a “prime rib with an American twist.”
Danny Kim, a.k.a. DannyGrubs, first made his name in the food world by creating TikToks where chefs turned fast food into gourmet meals. He’s since branched out by making longer-form videos that show off chefs cooking signature dishes in their restaurants, like in his prime rib video below.
Birk starts by putting the roast in the dry-aging fridge for seven days prior to applying marinade of mayo, A1, confit garlic, thyme, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and kosher salt. After giving the prime rib a good rub down with the wet marinade, it goes into the fridge for at least 36 hours. When it’s time to cook, it goes into a 350-degree oven for nearly two hours until it reaches an internal temperature of 120 degrees. He then serves it with a jus made from the roast’s trimmings and a grating of fresh horseradish.
Meanwhile, over at Gui, Seoul-born Shim creates a prime rib with an Asian influence. He begins by drying the roast in the fridge two to three days before applying a marinade of koji, black garlic, mustard, and water, which will then sit overnight. Day two gets a dry rub with a variety of peppercorns, sugar, shio kombu and then it’s back in the fridge for another night. When it’s time to cook, Shim takes it low and very slow, cooking for 10 hours to ensure end-to-end pink on the inside. His method is akin to a reverse sear for steak, but he’s not finishing in a pan. The key to his beautiful crisp crust may not be an ingredient you have in ample supply at home: a vat of rendered beef fat. Using a technique you may have seen to chefs employ to crisp up pork belly or fish skin, he pours ripping hot fat over the meat to sear the outside without hard without further cooking the inside.
So no matter which method you choose, between the two chefs, there are some clear tips you can take from letting your meat rest uncovered in the fridge for a few days to let excess moisture to evaporate to applying a wet marinade at least a full day before roasting. So if you do decide to get some prime rib this holiday season, you’ve got a good starting point to set you on your way.