Taking what I learned from both the oven temperature testing and the searing testing into account, I now knew what I had to do to fulfill all three commandments: My goals should be to cook the interior of the roast as slowly as possible (IE, at as low a temperature as my oven could maintain), then sear it as quickly as possible (IE, at as high a heat as possible). Searing in a pan is not that practical for a joint bigger than a couple of ribs wide, so I needed a way to do this all in the oven.
While some recipes will have you simply pump up the oven temperature towards the end of cooking, this is sub-optimal. An oven can take 20 or 30 minutes to go from it's lowest temperature to its highest temperature setting, during which time, once again, the outer layers of beef are busy overcooking.
But then, I thought, 20 to 30 minutes is exactly how long a rib roast needs to rest anyhow. What if I were to first cook it at a low temperature (200?F or lower), take it out of the oven, allow it to rest while I heated the oven to its highest temperature (500 to 550?F), then pop it back in just long enough to achieve a crust?
What I achieved was nothing less than Prime Rib Perfection:
But wait—there's more!
The best part? I found that by cooking with this two stage method, I had a much larger window of time to serve the beef. Once I got past the initial low-temperature phase of cooking, so long as I kept the roast covered in foil, it would stay warm for over an hour. All I had to do was pop it back into its 550?F oven 8 minutes before my guests were ready to eat, and the roast would emerge hot, sizzling, and ready to carve, no need to rest it after the 500, since the only part that is being affected is the very exterior.
Source:
The Food Lab: How to Cook a Perfect Prime Rib | Serious Eats
