Prime Rib…Bone In or Not?

[Barry]

Hi all,
I have my last prime rib aged the old way – wrapped in cheese cloth and a wing & a prayer at 14 days bone in and would love to hear your thoughts on cooking a roast or steak from this bone in or to remove it. Also should you dry bag age with bone in or not? Is it a sealing issue with the bagging thats the problem? The reason I ask is because all the dry bagging vids and examples tell you to use a boneless prime rib and I can’t find any info on cooking an aged roast. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated on this matter! Thanks!

Barry

[Ron Pratt]

Barry,
There have been several posts in this regard and right now I don’t have time to go back and find them -but in a nutshell unless the bone is well protected it may very well puncture a Drybag and besides that do you have a butcher’s saw so you can cut through the bones before serving?
Ron

[Barry]

Ron,
Thanks for your reply. I had planned on dividing the 15Lb rib primal into 3 sections between bones with a scimitar knife, center section for roast and ends for steaks, removing all bones and tying bone section back on for roast as some butchers will do for you. I don’t know if this is safe. The entire primal was aged 14 days bone-in.

[Ron Pratt]

Barry,
not wanting to sound like a s/a here but why are you wanting to save/age/serve the bones? While they can be left in tact for aging purposes that is normally done by commercial agers so the bone side can slow down the aging process – hence less weight loss so they can charge more!
Ron

[Barry]

Ron,
I understand the pricing thing but I’m strictly talking about a cooking thing. I am of the school of thought that when making a rib roast, not steaks, that you do it bone-in to get the extra flavor from the bone marrow, it makes for a natural rack to roast the meat on instead of a metal rack, and after roasting is done you get one heck of a good base to make beef stock or beef stew from. I just didn’t understand why all the advise/articles/videos say boneless all the time for aging. I thought it might be a safety or bacterial issue. I will search right now for any threads here on the subject and thanks.

Barry

[Ron Pratt]

Barry,

My understanding is the commercial aging houses leave the bone on primarily to control the weight loss as the thick bone essentially on 1/2 of the sub-primal will be protected though aging will take place, but not as rapidly. Then when they trim away the bone with their band saws there again will be some savings by not having to trim away the brown.

All the threads here about aging a bone in piece has dealt with preventing punctures in the Drybag and then wrestling with the problem of how the typical homeowner is going to be able to cut away the bones and or cut through them to permit serving individual steaks with bone in tact.

OTOH where there is a will there’s a way and you might just become the resident go to guy on the subject!

Ron

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