For a whole new take on a traditional holiday favorite, try rib rub for smoking a prime rib roast—low and slow—and enjoy it with traditional sides for a feast. Derrick Riches is a grilling and barbecue expert.

First things first: Before you run out and buy a seven-bone rib roast, make sure you have the smoker capacity to handle it. The smoking process will take 20 to 30 minutes per pound depending on weather conditions, the type of smoker used, and your level of desired doneness. Knowledge of your particular smoker and how it runs is very important. Make sure to tell your butcher that you will be smoking the prime rib.

Butchers and meat markets generally assume that the rib roast you buy will be roasted in the oven at a very high temperature for a short period of time before reducing the temperature to finish cooking the meat. For smoking, this process will be reversed, to allow the smoke to permeate and flavor the meat. The conventional wisdom about cooking prime rib is to leave a thick layer of fat all around the roast to help keep the meat moist. When it comes to smoking meat, however, you want to expose as much of the meat as possible to the flavorful smoke, and this outer layer of fat will prevent the even distribution and absorption of the smoke, leaving only the ends exposed. This is a problem with large roasts. This allows access to underneath the meat to season, but it won’t give access to the meat for the smoke to penetrate. Of course, the star of any prime rib is the roast itself, and it doesn’t need a lot of complex seasonings to make it great.