With the holidays all around us I keep thinking about an easy to prepare, but big and impressive meal to make at my folks place. I ran out to the local market and I happened to see some semi-boneless beef rib roasts on sale and grabbed a few. It isn't often that you can pick up gorgeous pieces of meat like this for under $5 a pound. One went into the freezer to make another time, and one into the oven, after a little prep work.

First I started by washing and drying the roast thoroughly. I pre-heated the oven to 325° F. and let it fully come up to temperature.

I then cut up a few cloves of fresh garlic into long slivers. With garlic I always feel the more, the merrier, so I went with hilarious and cut up four fat cloves. I poked deep, thin holes all over the roast with a paring knife and inserted the slivers all the way into the meat. I tried to cover the roast thoroughly with the garlic slivers and made sure they were spaced evenly.

I salted and peppered the 5 lb. roast using some nice Fleur de sel sea salt and fresh ground Penzey's four color pepper, and pressed the remaining slivered garlic onto the outside of the meat.



I sprinkled on a mix of Penzey's regular sweet paprika and some intensely fragrant Penzey's smoked Spanish paprika.



I thinly sliced up an enormous sweet Peruvian onion and laid it in a roasting dish. I also peeled and sliced a Honey Crisp apple and laid that on top of the onions. Onto this bed of onions and apples I gently placed the seasoned roast, as if it were royalty on a throne.



I opened a great bottle of wine for dinner, which of course I was sipping on as I cooked. Just a wee bit, I wouldn't want to get too buzzed and ruin the meal, or start a fire. So I poured a cup of this really nice, big, Feudi di San Marzano Primitivo di Manduria D.O.C. Sessantanni 2003 Italian red wine into the roasting dish as well, to give it a bit of moisture and amp up the gravy flavor later.



I plugged in my trusty remote instant read meat thermometer and inserted the probe so that the tip was in the middle of the roast and not near any bones or fat. This baby is a great kitchen gadget and I programmed it to go off at 120° F. and clipped the remote to my belt. Then I popped the roast in the oven for an hour or so.



While the roast was cooking I was time to prep some fresh green beans and put them in a frying pan with two tablespoons of butter, 1/4 cup of water, salt and pepper. I covered the pan and let it sit out of the way on the side to cook later.

It was now time to make the Yorkshire Pudding batter. I wanted to make a double batch since I had a nice large roasting pan and was in the mood for tons of puddin' to drown in quarts of gravy during the meal. I put 2 cups of milk, 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, 6 eggs, 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon each of salt, fresh ground pepper, and powdered garlic into a bowl; and mixed it thoroughly into a batter and set aside.

After awhile the house started to become fragrant with the aroma of meat, wine, and garlic as I roasted the beast at 325° F. Finally the remote meat thermometer went off at exactly 120° F. I removed the roast from the oven, placed it in a dish, and wrapped it with aluminum foil to rest. This would keep the roast moist and warm as it rested and slowly came up ten degrees in temp. over 20 minutes to 130° F.



I immediately turned up the temp. in the oven to 500° F. and took the roasting pan and removed the wine and meat juice soaked apples and reserved them for later, to serve as a savory fruit side dish. I took the onions and wine / meat juices and poured them into a medium pot and put it aside.

I put 1/2 cup of smoky tasting bacon grease I had been saving into the roasting pan, and put it in the oven to melt and heat up real hot, just until the grease started to smoke. I took the pan out of the oven and poured the Yorkshire pudd batter into the pan of hot grease. It looked real nasty but I ignored that and put the mess back into the 500° F. oven and watched it carefully. It would only need around 15-20 minutes to cook.

I added some beef stock and bouillon to the pot of onions / juices and brought it to a boil for a few minutes. I used an immersion blender to turn the onions and juices into a nice gravy. The onions thickened it up real nice, so I only had to add a little flour (that I first mixed into a little cold water) to thicken it up the last bit. I cooked it at a slow boil for a few minutes more to make sure the flour was fully cooked and integrated, and set the covered gravy aside for later.

As I watched the oven the puddin' started to rise like crazy. It first rose on the edges and the uncooked batter in the middle kept on feeding the growth as it got to 4", then 5" high. Then it bubbled up in the middle as well. When it seemed fully cooked and risen, with a dark golden brown color to and I could impatiently wait no longer, I removed it from the oven. This was a huge 2"x10"x16" pan and the Yorkshire Pudding had risen to 3"-4" in the middle and over 6"-8" in height at the sides. The insides were hollow with the deep brown parts slightly crispy, while the lighter colored parts a bit softer, and all of it was around 1/4" to 1/2" thick. It tore apart into big, soft and crispy pieces that were perfectly eggy and tasty all on their own.



I turned the heat on under the green beans and cooked them covered for two minutes at a boil. They steamed and sauteed at the same time in the seasoned butter/water mix until just barely cooked and still very crispy. I turned off the heat and let them sit to finish off while I carved the roast. Do you see all the soft roasted garlic slivers throughout the edges of the meat? The smell was incredible.



I finally plated the super thick slices of roast onto very large serving plates. this way there would be room for the huge pieces of Yorkshire pudd' and lots of the tasty onion and wine gravy. Oh, and of course the buttery green beans and savory apple slices. A big glass of the red wine and we were all set. Mmmmmmm...