Christmas Eve 2008

For Christmas Eve dinner this year, we tried our hand again with prime rib. Travis experimented again with a salt shell. As you can see, it makes for a very wintery presentation! It consists of a 5 lb rib eye roast and a 3 lb box of Mortons salt rock mixed with water to make a thick paste. This is then molded around the roast like a skilled artist works with clay. I sprayed it down with a spray bottle also to keep it moist and to assist with forming the salt around the meat. The meat I prepared with a cracked pepper rub and worchestershire sauce.

Carefully packing the salt around the meat is not as easy as it looks. Everytime you push against the meat, it flexes and then the salt you worked on falls off the sides. It can be very frustrating! The extra water helps though.

As you can see here, the final product looks pretty good. The salt seals the juces in suprisingly doesn't impart a salty flavor to the meat. You don't even have to cover the pan as the salt shell serves as a mini oven. The best part though, is the eating...

Ahhh, a perfect medium rare. As you can see, there is turkey there too. Well... Josh and Amanda and the girls came over to share dinner. We all had a nice feast and then played some gift exchange games. It was a lot of fun. See the pics below.