the way you cut the meat matters

* note: this platter is ~20″ wide, and the big slices of beef are ~8″ in diameter in the long dimension

ok, here’s the lesson first, to be followed by the story: let meat be all that it can be, and it will reward you. the lesson is first because i didn’t know where else to put this line, but i couldn’t let it go. sorry for the gratuitous text.

we had christmas (or pre-christmas, since we happened to celebrate christmas both before and after christmas this year, but not actually on christmas itself) dinner at my cousins’ house in new jersey, and my mom put me in charge of roasting the massive beef rib roast that she had purchased. i had a photo of it, but my camera battery is out, so i’ll have to edit this post later.

my mother had also frozen said rib roast, because she had bought it several days before the day of the dinner. considering how long a turkey (a similarly large hunk of meat that is often frozen) takes to freeze, i thought that close to 14 hours in a cool car would be enough to thaw the 10-pound-and-change roast. not so. not so at all, my friends. the behemoth was only just starting to thaw when we arrived at my cousins’ house.

luckily, i have a lot of expertise in expedited thawing of frozen meat, having had this phenomenon occur many times at lmf. under no circumstances will i ever condone the microwave thaw, so warm water baths it was. it’s important not to let the water get too hot or you encounter the same problem as you have with the microwave: you start to cook the meat. of course, this rule gets relaxed as the time you have to thaw the meat decreases, but we’ll just ignore that detail for now. change the water enough times, and you might just succeed in your thawing mission. well, dear readers, i thawed this thing for a straight two hours and it was still frozen inside. i don’t even want to delve into the bacteria growth in meat that’s encouraged by immersion in a warm water bath. i nuked the thing at 500F for 30 minutes, ok?

but never fear, i popped this thing into the oven anyway, even as the meat thermometer inserted inside decreased to 32 degrees fahrenheit. yeah. not so encouraging. but, i figured, with the cooking method – 30 minutes at 500F, then another hour at 350F – maybe it would all turn out fine. and it did! ok, the roast actually took closer to an hour and a half before, frustrated, i yanked the thing from the oven as soon as it reached the temperature for rare meat. and if you must know, i pulled the thermometer out of the center of the roast because i couldn’t countenance waiting any longer. yes, i have patience issues.

i let the dratted thing rest for 15 minutes, well short of the recommended 20 minutes, and started slicing into it between the bones. and…it was perfect inside! the outer edges were well-done but tender, the interior was rare – it was a win for everyone. and it gets better: i started slicing it by dividing it between the bones, as i intended to cut each rib section into two pieces since there were 10 of us. for those of you keeping score, yeah, i unwittingly planned on an entire pound of meat per person. as soon as i realized that half of a rib section was still a ridiculous amount of meat, i started cutting each half into halves, ending up with four to six hunks per rib section. and that’s hunks, not slices, people: because medieval-style hunks are way better-looking than pansy-ass delicate slices. slices are for yuppies. additional benefits of medieval-style chunks of meat: when you bring out the platter o’ meat, it looks like you went hunting, not just to the supermarket; eating meat like a peasant (a peasant with knife and fork) is entirely more satisfying on a winter night than eating meat with your pinky crooked out. eating meat this way is not unlike eating a roasted chicken with your fingers – it’s delicious, slightly guilty, decadent, but entirely pleasurable. eating meat this way convinces you that you’re eating meat, not poultry, chateaubriand, caviar, shellfish, or anything fancy-schmancy: you’re eating food.