I’m really excited to make this week’s recipes! It’s summertime, and I need to grill, so a rack of ribs sounds really good right now. These Jamaican Jerk Pork Ribs were just too irresistible. I love ribs and Jamaican food, and putting them together has got to be a good thing. Plus they promise to be nice and spicy, and I’m always down for some spice. Let’s find out if these jerk ribs are as good as the jerk pork at my favorite Jamaican restaurant.
These Jamaican Jerk Pork Ribs are rubbed with a mouthwatering sweet and spicy paste made of three main ingredients: chile peppers, allspice, and thyme. Mind you not for the faint of heart!
The Ingredients
So, there aren’t too many ingredients in this recipe, and most of them are dried spices. I happened to have all of them in my pantry and had very little shopping to do. In fact, I just had to buy a rack of ribs and a bottle of vegetable oil. The best part? The ribs were only $8.50. Talk about a cheap meal!
The Process
This recipe is fairly simple, but it does take a while. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 12 minutes to prep and apply the rub
- 1 hour 30 minutes to cook
- 10 minutes to rest
- 1 hour 52 minutes total (plus time to marinate)
The Rub
This part wasn’t difficult, but I did have to take some precautions. Gloves are very important because the scotch bonnet peppers are HOT, especially when they’re raw! I’ve chopped jalapeno peppers without gloves and ended up with a burning sensation underneath my fingernails for hours. I shudder to imagine that with scotch bonnet peppers.
First things first. Get a few things done without the gloves if you’re not used to wearing them (they felt very strange to me). Measure the vegetable oil, spices, and brown sugar, peel the garlic cloves, and peel the silver skin off the back of the ribs. If the silverskin is slippery, use a paper towel to help you grip it. It should come off without much effort.
Also, make sure you have a plan for how you will store the rubbed ribs. Mine came in a plastic-wrapped styrofoam tray, so I re-wrapped it in plastic wrap. I tore off a couple of large pieces and placed the tray on it, leaving plenty of extra plastic wrap to wrap over the ribs once I placed them on the tray.
Then it was time to put on my gloves, cut the tops off the peppers, and add them to my mini-prep with the rest of the ingredients. Pulsing for a minute or so had the rub blended to a smooth paste, and it was time to rub it onto the ribs. I put it onto the bottom first then placed the ribs onto the styrofoam tray and rubbed the top. The rub would have (sorry about this) rubbed off if I did the top first.
I made sure to wash all of my equipment next while I was still wearing my gloves. After removing them, I wrapped the plastic wrap over the ribs and placed them into the refrigerator to marinate overnight.
Cooking
The next day, it was time to grill up some ribs! And it rained. I decided to make them in the oven instead. This part was incredibly simple.
I placed the marinated rack of ribs on an oiled cookie sheet and baked them for an hour and a half, making sure to cover them with aluminum foil after the first 45 minutes. Letting them sit on the counter for a few minutes was the next step, and it was rough! The yummy smell of the ribs had already been torturing me for the last 45 minutes.
The final step in the process was to cut the individual ribs. They are very tender, so make sure your knife is very sharp or they will fall apart. I had great results with a finely serrated steak knife.
