As it's the holiday season, I thought I'd share my favorite standing rib roast recipe.

As those of you who know me can attest, I love beef. I especially love rare roast beef. There is nothing worse than cutting into a $100 roast to find it brown and ruined. This recipe will guarantee that won't happen.

For this most part, this Alton Brown's method of cooking, but with a little (and optional) twist.

This recipe will work for 2, 3, 4 or even 5 (wow!) ribs. Cooking time is approximate and is based on a 4 rib roast, but NEVER use a timer to cook your roast! Instead, use the internal temperature as measure by a good digital thermometer.

Also, I highly recommend finding a good butcher and hand picking your roast. Be sure the roast is from the loin end, and look for marbling. Marbling are those white lines of fat inside the red portion of the meat. That stuff is pure gold. The more marbling, the better the taste.

One last tip is to make sure your oven temperature really is what you think it is. Buy a oven thermometer and test it at various temperatures to make sure everything is accurate. This is in addition to your digital meat thermometer.

Total Cook Time: About 60 minutes per rib. (40 minutes per rib in a convection oven.)

Ingredients: A high quality rib roast (loin end), canola oil, salt, pepper, other seasonings according to preference.

Steps

1. 1 to 4 days ahead of cooking, tightly wrap the roast of beef with paper towels and place it in the fridge. This will be essentially a poor man's dry ageing. This will remove moisture from the roast and greatly increase its flavor. Don't do more than 4 days, though, and be sure to keep your fridge in the 34 to 38 degree range. Also, change the towels on a daily basis. When you're done, the roast might smell a little funky. No worries! If it does, just give it a quick spray down with cold water and pat dry. Trust me! :)
   
   
2. Approximately 4 hours (for a 4 rib roast, 3 for a 3 rib roast, etc.) before cooking, remove the roast from the fridge, remove any paper towels, and wrap it tightly in aluminum foil. Place the roast on a counter, or even better, on a large metal surface. The metal will act as a heat sink and will bring the roast to room temperature. I use an inverted iron skillet.
   
   
3. Just before cooking, liberally cover the entire roast with canola oil, including the bones. Heavily salt the roast (about .5 -to 1.0 teaspoons per rib), and apply pepper and any other seasons you like. I enjoy Crazy Jane's Mixed Up Pepper. For added goodness, cut shallow flaps out of the fat layer on top of the roast and place a little bit of duck fat under them. Trust me, it's amazing.
   
   
4. Here is the optional part. If you're planning on making gravy with the drippings, Alton's standard recipe will leave you a bit disappointed. Because he cooks low and slow and only cranks up the heat at the very end, you'll be left with very few drippings in your pan. So if you want drippings, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Once preheated, place the roast (on a rack and in a pan to catch drippings) in the oven, uncovered, for 10 minutes. This will prime the fat layer and result in a lot of drippings later on, but it won't cook the roast very much.
   
   
5. If you completed step 4, turn the oven down to 200 degrees and open the door for a minute to cool the oven more quickly. If you didn't complete step 4, preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Cover the roast with heavy duty foil. Once preheated, turn the oven down to 200 degrees and place the roast (on a rack and in a pan) in the oven. (You didn't forget the foil, did you?) Be sure you have your digital thermometer embedded in the thickest part of the roast, and as far away from the bones as possible.
   
   
6. Cook the roast until the internal temperature reads exactly 118 degrees F. Not a single degree more or less. In a normal oven, this will take about 45 to 60 minutes per rib. In a convection oven, it will take about 25 to 35 minutes per rib. But don't cook based on time!!! Use your thermometer! Immediately remove the roast and heat the oven up to 500 degrees. (Yes, even if you already did step 4.)
   
   
7. With the roast outside of the oven, wait until it has reached an internal temperature of 130 degrees. Sometimes larger roasts just won't make it. That's fine. But wait until the temperature hasn't risen in at least 2 minutes, or has fallen at least 1 degree, before placing it back in the oven. Place the roast, uncovered, back in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until the outer layer looks nice and brown.
   
   
8. Remove the roast and place on a serving platter or cutting board. Leave it uncovered. I usually let it rest for another 10 to 15 minutes before cutting.
   
   
9. ENJOY!

If you use this recipe, let me know how it turns out! :)

I'm a wine guy. Not one of those snobby wine guys, though. I just like wine a lot.

I've been watching a lot of Wine Library TV, which is a great show for us wine guys that don't like all the silly customs that normally accompany enthusiasm for wine.

Alas, I find myself wanting to purchase vast quantities of wines on the recommendation of the show's host, Gary Vaynerchuk. (Good guy, despite the fact he is a Jets fan. :)

Since I'm not about to drop $800 on wine, I figured I'd at least share my wine wish list and perhaps live vicariously through other people buying the wine. Send me some?

The media is in quite the frenzy over the upcoming FDA announcement that declares meat from cloned animals to be safe for human consumption. Everybody seems to be against the decision. (Which, by the way, isn't really a "decision" so much as a finding of fact, which makes people's anger over this all the more funny).

But why would cloned animals be dangerous to eat? All they are is the equivalent of man-made identical twins, albeit twins born many years apart, which doesn't happen all that often. :)

I wonder if the people objecting to this are really aware of what cloning is all about. Do they think that natural twins are also unfit for consumption? If not, why do they make a distinction for the man-made variety?

My hunch is that the people who are against this fall into one of three categories.

1. People who are against us "playing God"
2. People who don't really understand cloning or confuse it with genetic modification
3. People who stand to lose money due to the first two types of people not buying their stuff anymore

I suspect that the market for cloned meat will be primarily limited to the very high end suppliers which provide meat for savvy consumers and upscale restaurants. Breeders will be able to clone their finest cattle (or whatever animal) and sell it at an increased price. The same people who buy Kobe beef will buy meat from cloned animal known for its tastiness and quality. (Assuming they're not members of groups 1 and 2 mentioned previously.)

Furthermore, unlike mad cow, cloning isn't contagious. Just because a rancher has one or more cloned cattle doesn't mean that they can't sell non-cloned animals as well. So I'm not exactly sure why other countries would ban US animal products since we could simply not sell them the cloned animals.

Whatever. I welcome cloned animals into my diet. I want my baby back... baby back... baby back cloned ribs, damnit.