Smoked Ribeye from the Roadhouse
A marriage of steak and barbecue is a beautiful thing to behold
If you’re not in the mood for cooking at home, here’s a dinner that takes us many weeks to get ready, but all you need to do is drive over (or bike or walk if you live nearby now that the weather has warmed up) and order it! When it appears on the menu, as it has this month, it is almost always a hit!
The Smoked Ribeye was introduced for the first time about five or six years ago. Each time we take it off the menu for a few days, people start asking for it again. As a result, it’s appearing on the dinner menu now with a high degree of regularity.
So what’s a Smoked Ribeye? Someone described it to me last summer as “the best possible marriage one could imagine between steak and barbecue!” Hard to argue with that. A little bit of smoke, a nice piece of beef, a whole lot of flavor.
It begins with pasture-raised beef from a couple of farms within an hour of here. The beef is dry-aged—the way all good butchers would have done 60 or 70 years ago—for about a month, and then butchered from whole sides right here in the Roadhouse kitchen. For the Smoked Ribeye, we start by seasoning the beef with a mix of cayenne pepper, paprika, salt, and freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper. The whole piece is then smoked here on the pit over smoldering whole oak logs for about two hours. When you order a Smoked Ribeye for supper, we finish it on the wood-burning (or “live fire” as many folks are now saying) grill. We typically serve it up with mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach, but, of course, you can switch up the sides if you want (a little mac and cheese, maybe?).
Is it good? Yes! Really good! So many people have told me the Smoked Ribeye is one of the tastiest pieces of beef they’ve eaten in ages! A few have said “ever.” Longtime Roadie from years past Chris Domienik once told me, “It’s one of the best things on the menu. The smoke gets totally into the steak and it’s just so juicy and … it’s just awesome!” I took a Smoked Ribeye home for Tammie to try the one evening, and my whole car was perfumed by the smokiness. Neither she nor I eat much meat, but the Smoked Ribeye was so compelling it was gone in minutes! Smoky, savory, rich, meaty, and pretty darned marvelous! Served with a pat of Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter—it’s darned delicious! Swing by soon and check it out!
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