Smoked Prime Rib
Updated June 11, 2024
- Total Time
- About 16 hours
- Prep Time
- 5 minutes
- Cook Time
- About 4 hours, plus at least 12 hours’ dry brining
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
Yield:4 to 6 servings
- ½ cup kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal), plus more for serving
- 6tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
- 1bone-in, 2-rib roast (5 pounds), trimmed (preferably Frenched) and tied (see Tip)
- 1to 1½ cups molasses (preferably Grandma’s Original Unsulphured Molasses)
- Horseradish sauce (optional), for serving
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)
1439 calories; 106 grams fat; 44 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 45 grams monounsaturated fat; 4 grams polyunsaturated fat; 57 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 53 grams sugars; 62 grams protein; 1064 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
Powered byPreparation
- Step 1
The evening before your cookout, mix together the salt and pepper. Set your meat on a rimmed baking sheet with a wire rack and season it all over using about half the salt mixture. Let it dry brine, uncovered, in a fridge for at least 12 hours (and up to 24 hours).
- Step 2
One hour prior to smoking the rib steak, remove the meat from the fridge and let it come to room temperature while you prepare your grill: Mix together a mound of wood chips with charcoal — you’ll want to cover about half of your grill with the mixture; 4 pounds of charcoal and 2 pounds of wood chips should suffice for a standard charcoal grill — and offset the coal mixture to one half of your grill. Light the charcoal with the grill vents barely open and gradually adjust the vents to allow for more airflow until the pit thermometer reaches 225 degrees.
- Step 3
Twenty minutes prior to placing the rib roast on the grill, slather the meat all over with a thick coat of molasses then sprinkle all over with the remaining salt mixture.
- Step 4
Place the rib roast with the fat side up on the area of the grill with no coals underneath, allowing the meat to slowly cook until the internal temperature reaches 120 degrees, ranging from 2¾ to 3½ hours.
- Step 5
Once the meat’s internal temperature has reached the target, remove the meat from the grill and reignite the coals into a steady fire. Using a set of metal tongs or heat-resistant gloves, sear each side of the meat over direct flame until the molasses coating has caramelized into a dark shade of mahogany, about 1 minute per side.
- Step 6
Pull the roast from the grill and wrap in brown butcher paper. Allow the meat to rest in an insulated container, such as a cooler, for at least 30 minutes. This will allow the natural juices to settle throughout the meat for a more robust flavor and prevent any loss of heat during this resting period.
- Step 7
Using a carving knife, remove the string and detach the large rib bones from the roast by standing the meat on a cutting board with the bones pointing upward. With one hand firmly gripping the ribs, cut downward along the length of the bone to remove it from the rest of the meat. With the ribs now removed, rest the roast on its flat side and cut horizontally into 4 even steaks.
- Step 8
Salt to taste and serve with a side of horseradish sauce to counterbalance the richness of the flavor.
Tip
- Your local butcher will be able to trim and tie a rib roast at request, which will help the meat cook more evenly and maintain its shape throughout the smoking process.
Private Notes
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Cooking Notes
Judy Bee
Sounds great can it be done in a gas grill?
John R
Make sure you use hardwood charcoal, preferably oak. Charcoal has fillers that can impart bitter flavors. I use Chuck’s of pecan wood with hardwood charcoal to get a really nice sweet smoke into the meat. And never ever use lighter fluid!! Get a chimney lighter.
Dorsey
This can be done in a gas grill, but you need a good source of smoke. I have a Smokai smoke generator that uses pellets and a small air pump to create copious amounts of smoke. There are also inexpensive gadgets, like smoke tubes or boxes. The great thing about the gas grill is more precise temperature control. I also find putting a pan of water between the burner and the grate keeps the chamber moist and prevents hot spots.
Alisa
Step 2 is much easier on a pellet grill: preheat to 225.
jds
My top recommendation would be to make sure you have a digital meat thermometer and it remains in the meat throughout the cook. Controlling and even knowing the grill temp exactly where the meat is can be challenging. If you know the internal temperature of the meat it takes the guesswork out of it! I’m a big fan of low and slow with the reverse sear!
@copaceticinva
QUESTION: How does the smoke penetrate through the molasses to the meat? Or is the point to give the molasses crust a smoky element?
Ron S
The instructions for lighting the charcoal/wood mixture seem to preclude using a chimney starter since the mixture is supposed to be covering half the grill to start with. What is the recommended way to light it without using lighter fluid? Can you give a little more information of how one would "reignite the coals" to do the sear?
Bill McGrath
May I make a couple of suggestions? First, get rid of the bones before cooking. They don't contribute anything to flavor and only insulate one side of the meat, causing uneven cooking. Second, trim off most of the fat cap. You won't form a nice bark on fat, and the fat is NOT absorbed into the meat. Tie the trimmed roast into the closest thing you can get to a cylinder. This promotes even cooking. Otherwise, no argument with this recipe. Also, use a smoker instead of a grill. Easier to manage.
Jennifer
Low heat on one side and higher on the other. Place the roast on the low heat side.
David formerly from San Antonio
Kreuz's also has an incredible offset smoker with a separate firebox, and they start the post oak fire in there and let the smoke waft under and over the meat. That doesn't work in a Weber kettle where it'd produce too much direct heat. And heat from lump charcoal in a kettle is also hard to regulate. I'd suggest searching for the snake method with briquets (e.g., ATK and Texas Monthly) for low and slow Weber smoking. I'll be using that for this.
Zona Fowler
I plunge slices of garlic into the roast where I’ve stabbed it with a small knife. Garlic enhances any beef roast.
Keef ex Cucamonga
Tri-tip works even better for this technique, and costs far less.
Ron S
The instructions for lighting the charcoal/wood mixture seem to preclude using a chimney starter since the mixture is supposed to be covering half the grill to start with. What is the recommended way to light it without using lighter fluid? Can you give a little more information of how one would "reignite the coals" to do the sear?
Melanie
Use a fire starter which can be put into the coals without a chimney starter, and to reignite them or increase the heat, you just add a layer of new coals on top.
leeb
Should you be… washing the dry brine salt off at any point? We just did this and it was perfectly cooked, but really quite inedible - waaaay too salty and I only used half of the recommended salt!
Mitch Cumstein, The Villages FL
I have had great success using the "fuse" method to get my weber kettle grill to 225 and keep it there. I learned it from AmazingRibs.com. You basically stack your charcoal and wood in a fuse three or four briquettes deep around the outside edge of the charcoal grate. You then light a few coals and place them at one end of the "fuse", let it burn for a bit as you adjust the vents to keep it at 225 and then it slowly burns, keeping the correct temperature as it burns for hours.
Katrina
We used a ribeye roast (it's what we had in the freezer) and our Traeger. Also didn't read the recipe closely enough to have time to "dry brine" it. Still turned out beautifully. Ate half the day off hot and used our meat slicer the next day to shave it. Better then any deli roast beef we've had. Will definitely make again.
Stan M.
Quite possibly the best tasting piece of beef I’ve ever had. Used a three rib roast, off the bone, air cured 24 hrs. Smoked in a smoker at 200-220° to 120°, seared quickly, under a broiler, wrapped and rested 90 minutes. Perfect.
Ted P
Could not have been easier, and was very tasty. Did a 7.5 pounder, and used a barrel smoker and oak. The molasses gave the bark a positive flavor which my diners said had notes of melted marshmallows. I thought it played well with the salt and pepper. I will definitely do this again, but may omit the sear. It gave the edges a bit more of a steak like feel, and not the roastiness that I was seeking. I pulled it 125° and it was perfect after its rest.
silent e
I made this yesterday as a crazy first-time-ever smoking meat experiment. Crazy bc this is an expensive cut of meat to risk ruining. Bottom line, it was incredible; easily one of the top 5 dishes I've ever made. My setup was to use a kamadojoe grill with the sloroller smoking accessory which claims to achieve perfect smoking technique. I don't know if just using a standard deflector piece would have done the same job but the sloroller was amazing and apparently can work in lots of other grills.
DavidB
I agree on the snake method with a Weber. I did just that and the results were excellent. I also recommend using less salt, at least if you are using Mortons Kosher Salt (we didn’t have Diamond). Last: it would be a bit of a hassle to go from the snake method to a direct pile of charcoal for the final sear, so I just put the meat in a 500 degree oven for 10 minutes at the end, then wrapped it up and let it rest in a cooler for 30 or so minutes.
AB’ville
Made this tonight with a 2.5 lb cowboy steak, using a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker. It was easy and delicious. I took it off at 125 degrees,1 1/2 hrs at 250 degrees, wrapped in butcher paper and had a perfect medium rare. I wish I had taken it off at 120 as written for my tastes. My husband loved it and the molasses with the smoking was delicious. The molasses compliment and sweeten the smoke. My question is how to keep the molasses on better? It carmelized but lost a lot in drips.
Mike C
There is nothing wrong with this recipe, but I would focus my smoking on another piece of meat. There is a reason smoking meat is focused on cheaper, fattier, shoulder cuts, etc. Long and slow, works for these cuts. This recipe produced a delicious prime rib with a limited smoke taste, but I would go back to oven roasted capturing rendered fat for yorkshire pudding next time.
Judy
Way too salty!! Almost inedible due to amount of salt. Cooking method and smoke flavor great for prime rib—but too expensive a cut of beef to have the salt overpower all other flavors.
Debbie
This was so good! We made it on Father’s Day. Don’t be afraid of the molasses. There is no sweet taste but only a deep, richly flavored crust. We did the initial seasoning where you place half of the salt/pepper on as a dry rub marinade. But the second half of that seasoning we only sprinkled on using about a fourth of the half that was left. It was amazing and perfectly seasoned. We all enjoyed it.
Rajesh Padole
Actually the molasses is added BEFORE smoking. It is crisped up at the very end with direct heat.
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