Prime Rib with Cooks Illustrated...

My dad and I reviewed a few prime rib recipes for christmas day dinner...and we found that cooks illustrated (best of cookbook) seemed to be the best one. we hit a few snags during our prep..so, cooks, please comment if you have suggestions/answers to my questions/etc.

we seared the meat, in order to make it look a little more appetizing (since we're roasting it at only 200 degrees...) We questioned whether we should put oil in the pan, first. Cooks Illustrated says nothing. But it seems weird not to? So we did. What do other cooks do?

It's sort of hard to sear a big, oddly shaped piece of meat. Do most cooks have to press down the sides that won't lay flat naturally and hold that position till it cooks?





Cooks Magazine says we should have about a 1/2 cup of fat in the pan. We had. Well. Maybe a teaspoon? Wha?



We transferred the meat to a rack and put it back in the roasting pan. It says to salt and pepper generously. Do most cooks toss salt at the sides? This, too, seemed, well..weird. Maybe we should have rotatated the meat, and salted it on every side? Hard to handle this meat, even with our plastic, heat proof gloves. We didn't want to puncture it with a meat fork.



Stay tuned for updates and the final product.