Welcome to Mister Ballin' on A Budget's First Post

Hi everyone,  Mister Ballin' on A Budget here to give you tips, guides and just my general experience on how to experience life on a budget.  My main goal here is to just have fun with this blog and share with everyone how I handle things that come my way. 


With that said, my first blog post will be about Prime Rib.  I've always wanted to make a prime rib, but hesitated because of the price and the thought of ruining a perfect cut of meat.  My brother who have previously attempted to cook a prime rib, failed miserably.  So when Christmas time rolled around, I took the opportunity to score on some prime rib deals at the local supermarket.  Froze it in the freezer for the perfect occasion.  Well, given my "sabbatical" from work, this was the perfect time to cook it.  The prime rib was on sale $5.99/lb.  Bought a nice 5lb bone-in rib-eye roast for 33 bucks and change.  Not a bad score.  This roast can feed 5 people easily.  Let's hope that they will enjoy it. 

I'm using the recipe by Chef John from FoodWishes with a little twist.  You can check out his blog here.  Here are the following ingredients:


1 - Bone-In rib-eye roast ($33)
1 - 1/4 stick of room temperature butter (about $0.30 )
1 - sprig of fresh rosemary (from a friend's garden)
3 - cloves of chopped garlic (Pantry)
1 - teaspoon of Herbes de Provence (Pantry)
1 - tablespoon of ground pepper (Pantry)
7-8 - tablespoon of salt (Pantry)





Let the rib-eye roast rest at room temperature for at least 6 hours.  Mix the butter with the rest of the ingredients except for the salt. 

 Then, 30 minutes prior to cooking the roast, apply the compound butter all over the roast.   This requires a little messy application.  If you set your butter out and room temperature and use a spatula to whip the butter a little, it will make it easier to apply.








Now for the Method "X" cooking.  Multiply the weight of the roast by 5.  This will give you the exact time to cook your roast for 500 degrees Fahrenheit.  Round it up to the nearest minute.  After that, turn off the stove and let the roast to continue cooking from the residual heat for 1 hour 45 minutes.  During this time, do not open the oven for the heat will escape and you will not get that awesome medium rare state.

  

After the rib-eye roast have been in the oven for about an hour 45, take out and start slicing.  And viola! you have prime rib.  As you can see, the delicious center of the prime rib is worth the time and investment.  









Serve hot with your favorite form of vegetables and carbs.  I had rice with mines.  The taste was excellent.   Don't forget your au jus.  Just simply drain the oil from the pan and leave the dripping.  Couple tablespoon of flour to make a little roux, then add beef broth.  Bring to boil, season to taste and you have your au jus.






This prime rib can easily feed up to 5 people.  With a total of about 34 bucks for my whole meal, that comes out to about 7 bucks per person.  With the leftovers, you can make sandwiches and wraps for the next day which is another meal.   I say that is a budget well spent especially on prime rib.

So here are my budget tips:

* Around Christmas time is a good time to get in on some good deals for rib-eye roast.  Buy it and freeze it until you're ready to cook it.
* Less is more.  Don't try to be real fancy with seasoning and exotic spices for this.  Such a good quality meat like this needs minimal seasoning.
* Don't spend money on canned gravy or expensive sauce for the prime rib when you can easily make au jus in minutes that taste better than the store brought brand.
* Don't overcook the roast, it is always better to under cook it than overcook it.  For those who prefer more well done pieces, simply cook some of the rare slices in the au jus sauce.  As they say in the food industry, cook to order.