A Christmas Feast

Last night was a new milestone for us, serving a traditional prime rib for Christmas Eve dinner.  We had been dreaming of this moment for a few years now, but always had other large family gatherings on Christmas Eve.  This year we celebrated the Eve with Matt’s immediate family at his parent’s home. 

His youngest sister prepared a shrimp appetizer, some festive cranberry cocktails, and some twice baked potatoes.  The other sister brought an apple cranberry salad.  His mom made roasted asparagus, steamed broccoli, rolls, baked chicken (some of them weren’t eating prime rib), and a chocolate chip cheesecake. 

 

Matt used an apple wood smoke and cooked it on his Big Green Egg.  He makes some awesome meat with the Egg, but this was our first prime rib.  Usually we do pork shoulders, brisket, turkey, chickens, or ribs on the Egg.  For this occasion he ordered the prime rib right after Thanksgiving from a local butcher shop.  We prepped it the night before with some garlic cloves tucked in across the top and a coating of pepper and kosher salt, enough to look like a heavy frost.  

Then it sat in the refrigerator overnight and was brought out again late morning so it could warm to room temperature for an hour before being placed on the Egg.  We used the drippings to make Yorkshire pudding in the cast iron skillet.  If you aren’t familiar, it is a puff pastry and not pudding at all.  YUM!

 

The meal was a success and we hope to make it part of our traditions with our children in the years to come.

Obviously we enjoy cooking and this is something we like to share with others.  These last few years we have started to give each of his sisters a Dinner Certificate for their Christmas gift.  

We allow them to choose a meat, a grain, a vegetable, and a dessert and deliver it to them.  It is more than what they would eat in a meal so they have plenty of leftovers or they can invite others to share it with.  Matt makes the meat on the Big Green Egg and I prepare the other sides and dessert.  Here is what we recently delivered when they redeemed their certificates from last year at the same time.

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas with lots of good food and companionship.  Perhaps next year you’ll consider some delicious Fork Right Farm pork.  (sorry, no beef, but I told Matt we really need to raise our own cow now so we can eat our very own prime rib at Christmas)