Imagine the perfect outdoor barbeque with your family, a sunny day with a cool breeze blowing through the backyard, the smell of delicious fresh meat searing on the grill wafts through the cool air and the familial conversation takes a humorous turn. Let us know more about “Cost Of A Prime Rib”.
Imagine a presented-with-love indoor spread set for a celebratory meal or a holiday feast to remember for the ages.
One can certainly minimize the cost by opting for a slice of lower-grade meat but understandably the higher grade allows more flavor and provides a tender cut for your meal.
The cost of a prime rib ranges from $13 to $18 per pound. The variance in the price is based on the grade of the meat, a pound of Prime-grade prime rib would cost around 17 dollars and is great for roasting and grilling, while Choice-grade prime rib would cost around 13 dollars per pound.
All these visions of bliss-fully tender and flawlessly charred meat can be incredibly distracting yet the reality of our universe is that prime rib remains one of the more costly cuts of meat and if we follow the rule of thumb, i.e. one pound per person, a feast centered on prime rib can be expensive and the cost of just sourcing the meat comes to about $100 to feed a family of 6.
Now it is kind of hard to imagine the perfect barbeque without a perfect roast as the center point. After all, is anything truly more breathtaking and mouthwatering than a slow-cooked prime rib?
What Is A Prime Rib?
The juiciest, most tender, and flavor-filled cut of beef i.e. Prime Rib, which is also sometimes called “standing rib roast”, is a term used for the best chunk of an animal’s rib, namely the mid part. It is the softest cut of the meat, second only to the tenderloin.
The prime chunk runs from rib number 7 through 12.
This entire section makes up the prime rib and Rib-eyes and New York strips (2 more delicious cuts of meat) are also drawn from it.
Rarely use their back muscles
This part of a four-legged animal’s body is minimally activated as they rarely use their back muscles. Unlike us humans, they do not require back muscles to walk, hence the muscle here remains soft and contains an abundance of fat around the central eye of the meat which in turn, creates the perfect amount of marbling.
Buy in sections
Now an entire section of a prime rib amounts to about 25 pounds of meat which is way too much for an average family, hence it would be advisable to buy in sections of 3 to 4.
Why Does It Cost So Much?
Multiple factors contribute to the higher cost of a prime rib, some of them are listed below:
- Firstly, the percentage of better meat obtained from an animal isn’t too high.
In fact, for each animal that is butchered, namely cows, only 12% of its meat is classified as quality meat.
Considering the overall amount of meat, this is a very low percentage and understandably, most people would want the better cuts of meat, hence the higher quality cuts (prime rib and tenderloin, etc.) are sold at higher prices.
- Another reason for the soaring prices is the desirability of prime rib.
Many high-end restaurants look for the best cuts of meat for their menus and apart from that, these sections of meat are mostly the first choice at any family gathering or special occasions. And as the market demand increases, the price of the product increase as well.
- Prices sometimes also increase due to the sudden shortages that markets face as it is an organically sourced product and farmers may not breed as many cows every year as they did before.
- And lastly, the plain deliciousness of the prime rib is also a reason for its higher price.
In our world, it is known that the best will be higher in cost. The beautiful marbling, the tender meat, and the juicy bite that a prime rib provides contribute to its heightened costs.
Conclusion
Probably the most important question is, should one spend money on a prime rib? And the answer is simple. While it would not be advisable for the average household to make a prime rib spread every week, it is entirely plausible to expend on special occasions.
Presenting a tantalizing, perfectly smoked prime rib at your kids’ graduation dinner is probably going to lead to more than one teary eye, and in the best way possible.
Frequently Asked Question:
Q. What is the difference between rib-eye and prime rib?
Ans. Many confuse the prime rib and ribeye to be the same cuts of meat due to the similar name, however, these are different parts of meat but they come from the same section of an animal’s body, close to its rib.
The prime rib is a larger chunk of meat that consists of the entire primal rib area whereas the ribeye is just a steak.
Q. Is “prime rib” always “prime-grade”?
Ans. No, the prime grade beef refers to the overall quality of an animal’s meat, the grade is assigned by USDA based on multiple factors. Whereas a prime rib is just the best section of an animal’s rib. All animals will have a prime rib cut whether the animal itself is assigned a prime grade or a choice grade.
