Lawry's The Prime Rib-DEK Version

Growing up one of my favorite restaurants was Lawry's the Prime Rib, a Chicago institution devoted to hulking cuts of prime rib carved table side in custom stainless steel rolling ovens, spinning bowl salads, & waitresses decked out in gravy -brown colored dresses and white head bands.

My mom likes to tell a story that when I was 11 years old, the Keiser family was sitting by our pool debating where to go for dinner, and I suggested Lawry's.  Seeing that it was late in the afternoon on a Saturday night, my parents laughed and told me to make a reservation, thinking that this would placate me.  Much to their surprise I secured a table for 4 at 7:30, and off we went for a family dinner.  Since we don't have a Lawry's in Houston, I decided to bring Lawry's to our kitchen!

One of the four main grocery store chains in Houston is Rice Epicurean Markets.  Pound for pound, the stores our small in size, lack a diversity in products, and charge uber-inflated prices.  However, when their ad comes on Wednesdays (read:  Grocery Store Ad Day!), it's a safe bet they will always have a steal on a particular cut of beef; coinciding with my craving for Lawry's, Rice had a standing rib roasts on sale, and a plan for Saturday night dinner came together!

Ice Cream Salt & Prime Rib?  That's what I thought too when I asked at the store for rock salt and I was handed a box of ice cream salt, but low & behold, rock salt and ice cream salt-SAME THING!

Now I'm sure my Starwalt homemade ice cream aficionados are not only shaking their heads at this revelation, but also equally questioning why Rock Salt & Prime Rib?  They say the layer of rock salt on the bottom of the pan helps to create a flavorful "crust" on the meat; a thick crust there might not be, but the flavor is spot on!

Much like the Susan G. Komen 5k race we walked today, making a prime rib dinner is a race to the finish that requires planning, timing, and pacing.  We came out of the proverbial gate by first making creamed horseradish to accompany the meat, recipe courtesy of the Lawry's website.

Lawry's recipe calls to whip one cup of heavy whipping cream until stiff peaks form.  If you've ever tried this by hand, you know that to say the process is time consuming is an understatement.  Rather than break out a whisk, we used our Cuisinart food processor to do the job.  Word of caution though, you'll have stiff peaks in about 20 seconds.  Below is a picture of the first batch of cream I over-processed followed by a picture of what success looks like!

To the whipped cream we gently folded in 3 tablespoons of drained prepared horseradish (aka the raw stuff in the jar), a dash of hot sauce, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of Lawry's seasoning salt & pepper.

A tricky part of the recipe is draining the horseradish, but we came up with a quick solution.  We used our measuring spoon to scoop the horseradish from the jar, and then covering the measuring spoon with the back side of a real spoon, we applied pressure to the horseradish and "milked" the liquid out of the horseradish over the sink.  In the words of Borat, "Great Success!"

One of the more understated parts of the Lawry's experience is the Yorkshire pudding, a simple concoction of water & flour used to sop up meat juice.  I couldn't make sense of Lawry's recipe, abet simplistically written, didn't make sense to me, so I found a recipe video courtesy of the BBC, that calls to mix 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of milk, and 1 cup of flour before pouring into a greased muffin tin and baking for 20 minutes.  Our end result came out just ok compared to what Lawry's produces, but a noble attempt none-the-less.

Before we get into the main event, I wanted to showcase a couple of role players that complimented our main star.


No beef dinner is complete without potatoes, and since we follow the rules in this house, we made mashed potatoes.

While I mashed the potatoes, Elizabeth made a fantastic broccoli salad from a recipe from Martha Stewart's Every Day Food magazine, complete with Parmesan cheese, lemon zest & juice, walnuts, and salt & pepper.
















While the potatoes were boiling and the ingredients were prepped for the broccoli salad, we pulled the prime rib out of the refrigerator and let it rest until it came to room temperature.

After the roast warmed up, we placed it on a roasting rack before placing the two into a roasting pan whose base was peppered with rock salt.

Our 4 pound hunk of meat roasted in the a 350 degree oven for just over an hour and rested under a loosely tented piece of foil for 15 minutes.  While we lack a good final picture of the carved meat, the inside of the roast was a rosy medium rare throughout (aka what I call success).


While there was no spinning bowl salad or quality Yorkshire pudding, our dinner was a great success and tasted like a piece of home!