Slow-Cooker Jamaican Jerk Beef

Recently I posted about last week's food was a little repetitive, so I decided to try something new. Something that I've never attempted before. What do I have to work with? Beef, a slow cooker, and an assortment of spices. How do I figure out what to make with these? To the internet! Imagine myself in the superman pose, with my hands in fists extended in front of me - yeah, this is how I get online. It makes for pretty epic web browsing experiences. Anyways, as I was perusing some websites, I found some recipes for Jamaican Jerk Chicken. So I proceeded to do some research on the histories and other recipes. This is what I learned, and the recipe that I made up.

Jamaican jerk seasoning is traditionally used on pork or chicken. The two main ingredients are allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers. These peppers have a heat rating on the Scoville scale of 100,000 - 350,000 SHU (Scoville Heat Units). The Scoville scale indicates the amount of capsaicin present. Capsaicin is what gives the peppers "heat"; the molecular formula is (CH3)2CHCH=CH(CH2)4 CONHCH2C6H3-4-(OH)-3-(OCH3). Capsaicin itself is 16,000,000 SHU on the Scoville scale. For your comparison, a jalapeño is 2,500 - 8,000 SHU and a bell pepper is 0 SHU. I used cayenne pepper here, which is 30,000 - 50,000 SHU.

Slow-Cooker Jamaican Jerk Beef
1 pound beef
1 tsp allspice
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp garlic salt
1 1/2 tbls olive oil
1 lime, juiced
pepper to taste



1. Mix together the spices and olive oil in a small bowl.

2. Juice the lime and mix that into the bowl as well.

3. Cut the beef into small pieces and use either a fork or a knife to make shallow scores in the surface of the meat. This allows the meat to take on more flavor when you take your jerk seasoning and and rub into the meat. Do this now (you may want to use gloves for it).






4. Put the seasoned beef into a ziploc bag and place in the fridge for 3 hours.

5. After the beef has absorbed the seasonings, put it into the slow-cooker with a little water. Set the slow-cooker for low heat for 8 hours. Take out and eat.

I'll let you know how it tastes once I take it out tomorrow morning!
Edit: I tried it and it's good. I'm not sure if it's exactly Jamaican Jerk-flavored, because I don't have a lot of experience in that particular genre of food so I'm not entirely sure how it's supposed to taste. But I think I can describe it as yummy. There a bit of a edge from the pepper and cloves. Thanks to the cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, it smelled a bit like glögg (a Scandinavian mulled wine) when it was cooking.