RECIPE: Oven-Roasted "Jerk" Pork

How nerdy am I? I totally just looked up "jerk" on Wikipedia to see if this was actually a jerk recipe. The short answer is no -- it doesn't have Scotch bonnet peppers. But it has allspice, so it's halfway there. Jerk-inspired? Jerkish? I don't know. Either way, it takes about five minutes to prep and it's delicious.

You'll need:

• 1 lb pork loin (give or take)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp Papa Joe's salt (or a mix of sea salt and black pepper)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg

Mix everything together but the pork. Two options here:

1) If you're making dinner NOW, put the pork in a casserole dish and pour the mixture over it. It should be pretty grainy, so really rub it into the meat. Cook at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes (until it reaches temperature). 

2) If you're planning ahead like a good Girl Scout, marinate the whole thing in a Ziploc bag overnight to really get the flavor in there. Then cook it same as above. 

I was going for a toddler-friendly version this time around, but feel free to add peppers to make it spicier. 

My husband loved the pork, but the REAL star was the sweet potato stacks you see on the side. Holy yam heaven. They were amazing! They were so good that my carb-counting hubby shoveled them down like he was loading up for a marathon. The recipe for those is here. I used parsley instead of thyme and light cream instead of heavy, but otherwise I made them verbatim. Honestly, the recipe sounded so weird that I felt like I must be screwing something up, so I didn't even attempt to tweak it (beyond substituting the stuff I didn't have in stock). But oh. Oh my. It was good.