Monday Meat Madness!!!

I should probably make a regular thing called Monday Meat Madness. That would be cool. Anyways, last night was in fact Monday Meat Madness at the samaPlace. I'd long wanted to make Alton Brown's roast rib eye dish, ever since I saw him do it on TV. I'm not sure wether it's because he suggests using a terra cota planter as a dutch oven, or because he ages his own roast in his refrigerator, or because he doesn't sear the roast first but last instead. Whatever it was, Monday was the night.

yours truly, at
Monday Meat Madness

My friends Nate and Chris came over, and we ran the recipe pretty much according to the book. Well, as well as possible while sipping down mojitos, mint juleps and every other mint drink Chris could make. A few differences are worth noting, however:

1) I live in an apartment and my oven is only 16" sq. So I used a 15" diameter planter. Also, for my pizza stone, I used a 16" sq patio brick I bought at Home Depot. It's about 2" thick, so It's pretty much overkill, but I think that's macho, so there.

2) We never reached the recommended internal temperature of 130 degrees. We woud up getting close, at about 125.

3) This recipe took us a bit longer than 4 hours. More like 5 to roast.

4) We made the sauce, but forgot to use it. I did use some of it today on leftovers, and it was good.

So in any event, I a happy to report that the roast came out unbelievably good. Like completely unreal. I think that Brown is onto something with his recommendation to brown a roast at the end instead of at the beginning, and Chris told me he'd read somewhere that doing this has become standard practice in restaurants now, who realized some time ago that searing at the beginning of a roast does not in fact seal juices in. Go figure.

The picture below is the actual roast. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the plated product. But you can click on the photo to see a video clip of the carving (that's Chris' voice you hear getting excited). Enjoy!