recipe review: jamaican country ribs

thanks to quasi-landlord's current dietary restrictions, we're sometimes left with ingredients that she can't eat and that i more than likely forgot we had in the house. like black beans. there were a few cans of black beans lying around and quasi-landlord can't eat them, so she reminded me of their existence so i could do something with them at some point.

off i went to my recipe files while i happened to be making a grocery list. jewel had pork country ribs on sale, so my original thought was to buy a couple packs and freeze them for later use. then i found this recipe and realized i could make it this weekend. i bought a red bell pepper instead of the green pepper called for in this recipe, because organic red peppers were on sale for less than what i would have paid for either an organic or a "conventional" green pepper. 5 cloves of garlic instead of 4 because garlic is delicious and the cloves i had were on the small side. i didn't bother with the scallions at the end because lazy. oh, and i used a tablespoon of arrowroot instead of flour because i was out of flour. 

i didn't want to buy jerk seasoning because my spicy food tolerance is practically nonexistent and i didn't want to be stuck with a bottle of something that i couldn't actually use. i did a little digging and found a recipe for a jerk seasoning blend that i figured i could adapt for my own purposes. turns out we didn't have any onion powder, so that was omitted. i used maybe 1.5 teaspoons of cayenne pepper and skipped the crushed red pepper altogether because i'm a wimp like that. the seasoning isn't really that spicy, which means i probably could have added another 1/2 teaspoon or so of cayenne pepper and been ok. i still have some seasoning left and will probably use it on some chicken thighs or chicken wings. maybe i'll add more pepper then to see what happens.

in the midst of doing my prep work last night, i decided to rub some of the seasoning on the ribs and refrigerate them overnight. i do not regret this decision; in fact, i recommend you follow my lead on this if you have the time before making this recipe.

end result? i'm happy. there are plenty of leftovers so i'll get to see if the flavors develop more as the food sits.