Nope, not my own private Christmas dinner joke about the Crucifixion and The Shroud.
Wife bought an 11 lb fresh prime rib roast a couple of days before the Christmas dinner party and put it in the small basement refrigerator. I guess the roast was pressed up against the small freezer compartment, because it became frozen. We discovered that at 11:45 am today, before a 3:00 cocktail hour and a 4:00 pm dinner.
Uh-oh. The roast went in the oven, fingers were crossed. 90 minutes later, my remote probe thermometer in the roast interior still read 30F. Clearly this wasn't going to produce an edible prime rib by 4:00 pm. I pulled the roast out, intending to saw it into pieces. But as a last check, I temped different locations with my thermometer and realized that only one half of the roast had frozen. That half was 30 F internal, the other had risen to 70 F.
Ah-ha. Maybe this could be salvaged. I went to the garage and got a handful of 4" nails, cleaned them, and pushed them deep into the meat of the frozen half, leaving an inch of each nail exposed. The unfrozen half got covered in foil. Basted with melted butter, the roast went back in the oven.
The nails conducted heat into the frozen core of the meat, speeding up cooking of that half of the roast. The foil shielded the unfrozen end from heat, slowing down the cooking of that half. By 3:45 pm, both halves had reached 110 F together. We sat down just 15 minutes late. The roast was great, if you like rare prime rib, which is always what I aim for.