It’s finally time to get outdoors! If you’re like me, you’re firing up the grill every chance you get. Preparing great food while enjoying the great outdoors is a one-two punch of happiness for me.

How about mixing it up with this Grilled, Smoked Prime Rib Roast recipe that takes a traditionally inside meal – outside!

Ingredients:
1 (5 lb.) Prime Rib Roast
2 cloves of garlic minced
2 tbsp. ancho chile powder
1 tbsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. paprika
1 tbsp. oregano
1 tbsp. sage
salt and pepper
wood chips for smoking, such as hickory, apple or cherry

Directions: Combine the spices and garlic in a bowl with the garlic, salt and pepper and mix to combine. Coat the Prime Rib Roast heavily and evenly and set aside until the coals are ready. Get coals ready for grilling and soak wood chips in water, wine or apple juice for smoking. When the coals are extremely hot, sear the roast over the hottest part of the grill evenly on all sides. Add the wood chips and move to the coolest part of the grill. In a flat smoker, this is farther from the firebox. In a column smoker, this is higher up from the coals. The ideal smoker heat and time is 300 degrees for two hours.

If you don’t have a thermometer on your smoker, continue checking the coals and wood chips. Use a meat thermometer until your roast has an internal temperature of 130 degrees. Remove from the smoker and let rest thirty minutes before slicing.

Servings: 6 to 8

Source: The Kansas City Steak Company

Want more ideas on how to incorporate a rib roast or bone-in prime rib into your springtime cooking? Check out these prime rib roast recipe ideas and cook up something great!

Here’s an idea for smoky steaks – just in time for Memorial Day!

This requires a smoker to give the meat that amazing smoked flavor, and then finishing them off on the grill. This recipe comes to us from SmokinTex for use in their electric outdoor smokers. But you can use any smoker you can get your hands on.

See what ya think! Sounds delectable to me!

Super-creative, super-at-everything sister-in-law Chef Sandy is back with her idea for spoiling the dads in your life this Father’s Day.

Hint: it involves meat. And smoking it.

Some like it hot.  Not me.  It is hot in Houston at the moment, and I do not want to cook.  The thought of heating up my sun-baked 1950s ranch-style home any more than necessary by turning on the oven, is just unthinkable.  I read a recipe in today’s paper for a pork sandwich that looked truly delicious and delightful.  A sandwich is not hot, right?  Wrong…. This recipe called for the pork butt to be baked for 4 hours at 250°.  With my west-facing kitchen and the worst oven in the world, that would mean the whole kitchen would be about 110° by the time dinner was ready.  By that time, I am way too hot and irritable to even think about pulling pork and making gorgeous sandwiches.  There has got to be a better way.

Cooking with a smoker is an old-fashioned, time-honored way of slow cooking meats, which also happens to cook them outside of the kitchen.  Grilling is also an outside method of cooking, but one which generally requires more attention (read: me standing over whatever is cooking, making sure it doesn’t burn) and necessarily means standing outside, hopefully in the shade, over a live heat source.  Also not that appealing when it is 97° in the shade.

But smoker cooking, especially in today’s modern smokers, is pretty hands off.  I have an electric smoker that I plug into an outlet in my garage.  The smoker sits on my driveway, about 12 feet from my kitchen back door.  In the evening before I want to cook, I dry rub seasonings on my chosen meat product (a large pork butt, in this case) and wrap it well and let it sit in the fridge overnight.  Early in the morning when it is still cool-ish, I take the meat out of the fridge while I get the smoker ready, which involves putting 2 oounces of wood in the “fire box,” and covering the bottom of the smoker with foil.  Then I drag out my heavy duty extension cord, plug the smoker in and go inside and get the meat.  The meat is placed on the grate.  I close the smoker, turn it on, and let the thing smoke for 8-10 hours until it is done.  Maybe I have to take it out and cover it with foil, which I do in the case of a pulled pork or beef brisket, but that is as hands-on as it gets.  The electric smoker I have does a great job of maintaining an even temperature, and also keeps the meat pretty moist.

My smoker also happens to be large enough (I have about 6 shelves for different products, and each shelf is big enough to hold a 9×13 pan) that I can, if organized, cook other side dishes at the same time as my main entrée.  So, for example, I can slide in a pan of beans to bake at the same time I cover the pork with foil, and when the pork is done cooking, I will also have beans.

In the evening, after having an icy cold beverage for fortification, I can remove the meat and finish the preparations for dinner in my cool kitchen. Add some coleslaw and buns, and that is dinner for at least 8 hungry people.   Add some icy cold watermelon or ice cream for dessert, and you will have a happy crowd.

So what are you making the fathers in your life for Father’s Day this weekend?

Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of www.Gourmet-Ovens.com.