The Week of the Rib Roast

Due to some confusion on my part on just how large a rib roast is, when we bought the side of beef we didn't have the rib roast cut down. This meant we ended up with a huge 8-rib roast.

When Peter called to ask about making the rib roast for a large family dinner, I said sure. It turned out that he only made his half for the dinner, but since he had to defrost the whole roast to cut it in half that left my half remaining. I didn't think I'd have time to make it, so we roasted it that night during the dinner.

Since there had been no real plan to make it, we kept it simple. Rubbed the roast with salt and inserted some rosemary into it. Roasted it at 450F until it reached around 145F.

We've been eating roast all week. There's only two of us, so it's a lot of meat to eat through. Started off with basic things: plain roast, roast beef sandwiches, grilled cheese with beef slices.

Next I used some to make hash, basically I fried some sliced, cold, boiled potatoes, diced onions, and beef pieces in butter until brown. Seasoned with salt, pepper and bit of aleppo pepper for kicks. Topped it off with a runny, fried egg. Fairly tasty all told.

Then there was fajitas. Sliced up the beef and an onion. Briefly marinaded them in lime juice, olive oil, garlic, chipotle, ancho pepper, and cumin. Cooked until the meat was hot and the onions tasty. Also sauted some frozen colored peppers in the remaining sauce. Served in tortillas with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole. Although not as good as the other fajitas I made, I greatly enjoyed them.

With the remaining beef, I turned it into "char sui". While cooking some rice, I marinated the beef in a char sui sauce: light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, shoaxing wine, honey, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, and 5 spice powder. Fried it up until the beef was hot and the sauce was sticky. Served over rice with a side of garlic-sesame spinach and an clementine. The result was so-so. The parts of the meat heavily infused with rosemary did not go well with the sauce, but the rest of it was good.

I still have the ribs with a fair amount of meat on them. I've tossed them in the freezer for now, but I intend to turn them into soup.

Honestly, I'm not thrilled with this use of the roast. If I buy a side of beef again, I definitely do different cuts and limit rib roasts to two ribs.