Category: General

Let’s say you’re too lazy to marinate food for more than ten minutes, and you don’t have any fresh herbs or peppers around. Can you still achieve semi-authentic jerk flavor?

• chicken parts, pork ribs, skirt steak, or something similar
• dried herbs like oregano and thyme
• ground spices like allspice and cumin
• pepper sauce such as Melinda’s, Tabasco, or similar
• something acidic, such as lemon juice or vinegar
• salt and pepper

Cut some clashes in your meat in order to facilitate flavor penetration and reduce cooking time. Pork ribs can’t be slashed much, but cutting them into chunks of 2-3 ribs will provide more surface area. It’s best to mix up all your marinade stuff first, but if you’re like me you’ll just sprinkle it all on on then massage it in lieu of mixing. This also ensures you’ve got enough marinade on the meat – it should be well coated. Rub the marinade into the slashes in the meat.

Grill the meat over hot coals for maximum flavor. Skirt steak can be cooked in a hot cast iron skillet. Chicken and pork ribs can be roasted in a 400-ish degree oven.

Since I follow a diet where I’ve gotta avoid certain food additives, for a long time I stuck with original recipe Tabasco because it only contains peppers, vinegar, and salt. It’s sorta boring though, so I started picking up bottles and reading labels. I was amazed by how many hot sauces contain additives like guar gum and sugar. I think the additives are supposed to improve the texture of the sauce, and maybe keep it from separating.

After a long and fruitless search I found Melinda’s habanero-based sauces. I had a bad experience with a habanero at a party once so I was cautious at first, but they aren’t terribly hot. They contain carrots, which may moderate the heat a bit, and likely improve the texture too. So far I’ve tried their XXXtra, XXXXtra Reserve, and Chipotle sauces. The flavor is excellent, with less vinegar flavor than other sauces I’ve tried. The chipotle is nice when you need some smokey flavor. Melinda’s does make a couple with bad stuff, including their Amarillo Hot Mustard, Mango, and Jalapeno sauces. As always, it pays to read labels.