Hortus Deliciarum

There’s a great grocery store about ten minutes away that has a truly remarkable deli section. A month or so back I discovered that on Saturdays they serve prime rib. That visit I chatted with the guy at the counter and found out that his mom was from England. He and Graham then talked a bit about the UK. When we got home, the serving of prime rib was a great size and it was absolutely delicious, so this week I was having a hankering for more and, figuring my little carnivore child would be amenable to the idea, we went back to the store to pick up a couple of prime rib dinners.

I knew right away that the guy last time must have been very nice to us, because the servings this time were about half the size. When we got home, though, was the true disappointment.

I like my meat juicy. A bit of fat (yes, I’m one of those people who like it, but I try not to eat as much as I could, although it’s tasty, because I get paranoid that I’ll drop dead of a heart attack). A nice, flavorful crust on the outside and meltingly tender meat on the inside, preferably medium-rare. My dad likes his meat dry. By dry, I mean sawdust-overdone DRY and my entire childhood/young adulthood I thought chicken breast was foul…only to discover that no, when it’s cooked to done but not too done, it’s not as good as dark meat but tastes okay.

This prime rib, that I paid $12.99 for and was looking forward to? Dry. Dry as a dry, dry bone. So dry I couldn’t eat it. Jus is NOT supposed to be there to add moisture to the meat. Flavor, yes, and a bit of additional juiciness, but good prime rib should be delicious even without the jus, so I never order it (I drip it all over myself and don’t see the point).

This was not good prime rib. Even Graham, who will eat well-done meat (I’ve converted him to medium from the days when he’d only eat well-done), thought this stuff was overcooked. He had a piece from the center and it was still brown all the way through. Not even a hint of pink. The POINT of prime rib is that you don’t cook it past medium unless you’re a cretin. For the entire thing to be brown means the ends, which should be delicious, crusty, salty bits of heaven were hard and dry. Moisture-suckingly dry.

So now I’ve totally missed out on a meal I was anticipating with some delight and am feeling let down. I’ve got plenty of other food in the fridge but what I really, really wanted was prime rib, dammit. Good prime rib.

Do I write a letter that will probably have no effect whatsoever? I don’t know. I do know that I’m sorely, sorely disappointed that

Tags: bad food, cravings