How To Make Jamaican Jerk Chicken

-Jerk

chicken

should take about two days if you prepare it correctly. It's not something you just throw together really quickly and throw on the grill. It's really a barbecue. You know, it's controlling your heat. It smokes as it cooks. Hello, I'm Kwame Onwuachi. I'm from the Bronx, New York. And I'll show you how to

make

roast

chicken

the real way. You have to brine the chicken. You know, that's how you get it really juicy, flavorful to the core. So we're actually going to

make

brine almost idiotic. So the same flavors that Jerk Chicken has we will impart to our brine.

So we'll start with the ginger. Don't worry about peeling this bad boy. Let's cut it in half and put it in the water. I'm going to throw in some allspice berries. I'm going to cut this in half. Again, don't worry about peeling it. All that flavor will come through that skin. You've got a little bit of salt, a little bit of sugar and then a Scotch Bonnet chili. And I'm going to cut this in half. So I'm going to turn this on and let it boil. So what we're really looking for is letting the sugar and salt dissolve into the liquid.

It is not necessary to bring it to a full boil. But once you see that all the salt and sugar have dissolved into the liquid, you're ready to go. To speed up this cooling process, I have replaced half of the liquid with ice. And make sure you always use a different pot to put it in, because if you put the ice directly in here, it will melt and heat up again. And then I'm going to add the chicken to the brine. This is a whole chicken that we just divided into six equal parts. I'm pretty sure you can Google how to do it if you can't pick it up at your local grocery store.

Let it sit for at least 24 hours. I like to stay 48 hours. So let's make idiot pasta from scratch. Now, Jerk Paste is a bunch of different ingredients, about 15 different ingredients that sing when combined. So I'm going to add my liquids. So we have soy sauce. We have Wocestershire. Woces-ces-shire, Woces-ces-ces-ceshire. We have thyme. A little bit of salt. Cinnamon, cloves, tamarind rhythm. And I like to use tamarind for acidity here. It's really great. Fresh bay leaf. Then I added a little brown sugar. I'm going to cut them in half. These are more Scotch peppers. We want this to be very spicy.

Right now I'm going to add a little bit of garlic, about five cloves. Simply press down on your knife. The clove should come out and, like, just peel the end of the garlic. Jerk chicken is more than just throwing a jar of

jerk

paste on chicken, right? It was an act of preservation, you know, of the Tainos who were escaping the British. The original inhabitants of the island of Jamaica. Climbing a waterfall and trying to stay free. That's why they didn't want to give up their location. And, you know, they used the idiot as an act of preservation to, for example, store food for a long time by smoking it.

But second, they didn't want to show the smoke because that would reveal where they were. So they built it underground and all that smoke went in there. So, you know, you have to smoke. You have to smoke your chicken. There is history behind this. But there is also technique and there is care. I'm going to add some green onions to this and cut them into large pieces. Once again, the food processor will do all the work. And then the ginger. I love peeling ginger with a spoon. You get the highest performance. Anyway, I don't know why people peel ginger.

The skin tastes like ginger. What the fuck? I'm going to cut this a little bit. The food processor will do all the work. You want to chop this more than the other vegetables and aromatics because, you know, ginger is very, very fibrous and you want to help your machine as much as you can. Have all that in your hands. Put that there. There are so many things you can do with this pasta because it is so flavorful and so robust. That's why I love having it available to add to certain things. Just a little touch of flavor.

On deck means available. I'm sorry. I just wanted to... I don't know if everyone knows this. You don't want it to be soft. You wanted to be like pasta with chunks. ♪♪ That's what we're looking for. It is very aromatic, so be sure to try it. ♪♪ It's fucking good. We have this in brine. You will see that the water is a little more cloudy. Some of the blood comes out of the chicken and some of those aromatics open up as well. That's why I like to do it for at least two days. The flavor goes down to the bone.

I'm going to put on some gloves because I'm really going to get my hands into this chicken, you know? Let this drain a little. Now, you don't need all this. You're going to save some for your BBQ Jerk sauce. So remember that. But you want a good amount here. Make sure you massage it very, very well. So I'm going to cover this with plastic wrap, but I'm going to put the plastic wrap directly on the chicken. That way it completely suspends him in that idiotic paste. You will get maximum flavor extraction from this. I'm going to let it relax for a day.

I see you tomorrow. No, I'm fucking with you. I'm still here. Jerk BBQ Sauce. This sauce is versatile. We'll start with the onions. At the same time, let's turn this on. Like medium high. You don't want it too hot. You just want the onions to sweat. You don't want any color added to them. Many people feel comfortable just going to the grocery store and picking something off the shelf that you can easily make at home, like mayonnaise, you know, or barbecue sauce in this case. I would use this recipe as a sort of base and then add whatever flavors you want.

You can add peaches to make it a peach barbecue sauce. You know, whatever is in season or whatever your favorite fruit is, you can use that. So don't be afraid. Be the boss of salsa. It is very, very important. While I was chopping onions, I heated the oil and everything was ready. I'm going to work with this garlic. So let's cut this too. Don't worry too much about that. It should already be broken a little if you smashed it correctly with the knife. Use your sword as a tool. So you just want to sweat out the aromatics.

You don't want any color on them. I'm going to add a little salt to help speed up that process. Draw out moisture. Very good, ginger. Once again, let's cut this. Thick cut is fine. Just make sure the cuts are consistent so they cook evenly. Alright. Let's get straight to the point with this. So we're going to let this sweat for about five minutes. I'm going to add the idiot pasta to this. Brown sugar. ♪♪ And the ketchup. So give it a nice little mix. And after mixing it well, just put it on low heat. So after about 30 minutes, you'll look like this.

It will be nice, dark brown, almost like candy. I'm going to blend it so it's nice and smooth. So you want to do this in batches. I'll probably do this half first and the other half later. ♪♪ That's all. There you have your beautiful barbecue sauce. Alright. Alright kids, time to make some chicken. Make sure to soak the wood chips. You can use whatever you want. Apple, mesquite, maple. The pepper is the best. you can unplug it and it will be shipped directly from Jamaica. That's what we have here. I'm going to pour a big handful of this directly onto the coals.

Get this up to smoke. Oh yeah. It smells very good here. So you want the grill to be hot. And that way, when you put it on, it cauterizes the skin and doesn't stick. We don't want him to stay. We want crispy skin at all times. We are in mid-January. We're here in New York City, so it's fucking cold. But we're all fine because we have that sucker. So the most important thing when grilling is to really control the heat. You have to constantly review your articles. Now, we have smoke here. Therefore, it will continue to impart flavor as it cooks.

I'm going to put a little bit of salt in here, we're going to let it cool for about 10 minutes and we're going to come back and turn it over, okay? At this point, the chicken should look like this. It should even brown on the side that wasn't even touching the grill because all that smoke is soaking into the skin. And then flip it over... ...and you should have crispy skin right now. We're going to char this a little more, but we wanted to cook it evenly and not just on one side. So I'm going to turn this around.

And this is like the color we're looking for right there. Enter here. Let me show you what the fuck is going on. This is the color we're looking for, okay? So we'll leave this for another 10 minutes. Go back, spin it again and just evaluate it. Oh yeah. We are getting a little bit to where we want to be. So before I flip, I'm going to add a little more of that idiotic pasta. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Don't you know, brother? And this, ladies and gentlemen, may be the final twist. This is a magnificent marinated chicken. I'm going to add just a little bit of this idiot barbecue.

It doesn't have to be perfect. You just want that flavor there. You can see that the sugars are already starting to caramelize. ♪♪ It's okay. Let's get out of the cold, eat some roast chicken. It is only fair that we eat it in the most authentic way possible. So I'll grab a good knife and then follow it. And you'll see how juicy. Check it out. And that's how they serve it in Jamaica. Chop it right there, bone and all. Now we're going to add a little more idiotic pasta. This is really great finishing it off. And then barbecue sauce to finish.

I encourage you to devour this if you just spent three days making it like I did. ♪♪ And enjoy the fruits of your labor. You know, you put all the time into this. Enjoy it. Enjoy it with friends. Split the bread. If you want to see the recipe, click the link below. Or come check it out at my restaurant, Kith/Kin. ♪♪ ♪♪