Jamaican Jerk Pork Tenderloin

  • It’s been rain­ing and rain­ing and rain­ing out our way. It stopped for a while, but now the steady drum­beat on my drain­pipes tells me it’s start­ing up again. It’s the kind of weather where my thoughts turn to bak­ing or soup­mak­ing, but I already bought all the ingre­di­ents for Jamaican Jerk Pork Ten­der­loin, and so that’s what I’ve got mar­i­nat­ing in the fridge. It’s a recipe I got out of a lo-cal cook­ing mag­a­zine a cou­ple years ago and it has grad­u­ated to the front of my “keep­ers” recipe file.I get a kick out of blend­ing 2 cups of green onions with all these spices, vine­gar, soy sauce and what­not — it looks like the nas­ti­est green slop ever and has an aro­matic pun­gency that’ll clear out your sinuses. But the pork you mar­i­nate in it and then grill is just heav­enly, and maybe the “island” fla­vor will help us think warm and sum­mery thoughts while we wait for the umbrel­las to dry off.

    (By the way, in case it needs to be said, be care­ful when you’re han­dling the habanero pep­pers. The recipe isn’t that hot if you only put in one pep­per (the Jamaicans put in 10, by the way), but even deal­ing with one has its prob­lems. They’re the hottest pep­pers you can buy (I think), and so you’ll want to wash your hands imme­di­ately. I got care­less and scratched an itch next to my eye before I’d washed up. It’s not burn­ing much, because I had hardly touched the pep­pers, but it’s still enough to remind me not to be such a doof next time. On the other hand, if you looove the hot stuff and want to kick it up a notch, you can leave the seeds in. Not my idea of a good time, but then I might be a wimp.)

    Jamaican Jerk Pork Tenderloin

    2 cups coarsely chopped green onions
    1/2 cup coarsely chopped onion
    2 table­spoons white vine­gar
    1 table­spoon soy sauce
    1 table­spoon veg­etable oil
    2 tea­spoons kosher salt
    2 tea­spoons fresh thyme
    2 tea­spoons brown sugar
    2 tea­spoons chopped peeled fresh gin­ger
    1 tea­spoon ground all­spice
    1/4 tea­spoon ground nut­meg
    1/4 tea­spoon black pep­per
    1/8 tea­spoon ground cin­na­mon
    2 gar­lic cloves, minced
    1–4 Scotch bon­net or habanero pep­pers (depend­ing on how spicy you want it) — seeded and chopped
    1 (1 1/2 pound) pork ten­der­loin
    Cook­ing spray

    1. Place first 15 ingre­di­ents (from green onions to habanero pep­pers) in a blender or food proces­sor, and process until smooth.
    2. But­ter­fly pork ten­der­loin by cut­ting almost all the way through the ten­der­loin length­wise, open­ing it up like a book and cut­ting each of the other two sides length­wise the same way, so you can open the ten­der­loin up and allow for more sur­face area. Pour the green onion mix­ture over the top, work­ing it in with a spat­ula or spoon. Put the meat into a plas­tic bag, pour the rest of the mix­ture in and work it into the pork so it cov­ers it.
    3. Cover or seal, mar­i­nate in refrig­er­a­tor for 3–24 hours. Remove pork from the bag.
    4. Pre­pare the grill. (We don’t have a grill and if we did I couldn’t use it in this weather, but a con­vec­tion oven or reg­u­lar oven heated to 450 degrees does just as well).
    5. Place pork on grill rack coated with cook­ing spray, grill 8 min­utes on each side or until meat ther­mome­ter reg­is­ters 160 degrees — slightly pink. (If you’re cook­ing it in an oven, your time will be longer of course. Trust the meat ther­mome­ter, because the pork tends to take on a pink­ish hue that can throw you off and make you think it’s not done. I cooked mine for 25 min­utes, and it was perfect.)
    6. Yield: 4 serv­ings (serv­ing size: 3 ounces pork).

    And for the calorie-conscious, here’s the nutri­tional infor­ma­tion per serv­ing. If you’re on Weight Watch­ers, I believe it comes out to 5 points:

    Calo­ries: 248 (27% from fat)
    Fat: 7.5g (sat 2g, mono 2.8g, poly 2g)
    Pro­tein 26.9g
    Carb 7.1g
    Fiber 1.5g
    Cho­les­terol 111 mg
    Iron: 3.1 mg
    Sodium 1.126 mg
    Cal­cium: 52 mg


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    May 6th, 2007 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Deb 05.06.2007

    Yummy. I don’t like things par­tic­u­larly hot spicy either. How­ever, I have been known to bar-b-q in rain and snow. And I still live in the dark ages using bri­quettes and news­pa­per. :)

    I have a cousin with a sim­i­lar story as your’s about the pep­per oil near the eye… except he went to the bath­room with­out clean­ing the oils off his hands! :O

  • her­man

    My first expo­sure to ‘jerk’ was at a reg­gae fes­ti­val at Cal State Dominguez Hills… tasty tasty.

    Thanks for bring­ing back a good (in taste and mem­ory) memory

  • Grace

    And then I think that there are vari­a­tions of the ‘jerk’ con­cept. I’ve had Jerk Chicken that’s sort of like Pollo Loco kicked up a notch. Big on cit­rus and spices together, very tangy and seared on a grill. That was really good stuff too, but I don’t know what the sim­i­lar­ity is to this — the mari­nades don’t taste alike.

  • s-p

    Rain?? Sigh… I’m jeal­ous. We won’t see any again until August.
    104 already here. We just toss the roast on the side­walk for a cou­ple hours.

  • Michelle

    That sounds incred­i­ble! My hubby and I went to Jamaica for our hon­ey­moon and we fell in love with jerked food. I’ll have to try out that recipe.

  • Grace

    We’re actu­ally mak­ing it again tonight. We do like it that much, but also both the pork ten­der­loins and the green onions came in quan­ti­ties that would make two recipes. So I’ll revisit the Car­ribbean tonight — rum punch all around!

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