- [Narrator] Today's episode is sponsored by Traeger.
Traeger Grills make it easy to make your food taste amazing.
They're also versatile enough to grill, smoke, bake,
yes bake, roast, braze, and barbecue
on the entire lineup of Traeger Grills.
Click the link in the video description to learn more
and subscribe to Traeger's YouTube channel for more recipes.
Obviously Traegers are a dream for slow and low barbecue,
but its high heat functions make it perfect
for the subject of today's episode, jerk chicken.
Let's get down to basics.
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All right, so the first things first with jerk chicken,
chicken.
Thighs, drums, and wings tend to play best
with the heat of the grill,
but breasts are still totally viable,
so long as they're skin on and bone in,
which is why I like to break down a whole bird.
If you want to see a video on how to do this,
click the link in the upper right hand corner right now,
but rest assured it's not that hard.
It's a lot cheaper than buying the pieces separately,
you get a little bit more variety, and, texture, and flavor.
You can generally find a higher quality bird
when it's whole, and look free chicken spine,
not a bad haul.
Next and perhaps just as importantly,
we got to talk marinade.
I wanted to start by making as traditional a recipe
as I could find,
which generally starts off with a mortar and pestle
in which we're gonna start by crushing up
one and a half tablespoons of whole allspice berries
and one and half teaspoons of black peppercorns
until they're in small enough pieces
that they won't get stuck in your teeth.
Then we're letting four large cloves of garlic
naturally slide off the palm of our hand
and adding four or five sprigs worth
of fresh picked thyme leaves,
about a tablespoon and a half.
Then we got three or four fresh scallions
that we're gonna roughly chop for easier processing.
And then it's time to glove up
because we need to start playing with our Scotch bonnets.
These are a little hard to find
and very similar to habanero.
So you can use habaneros if you want,
they just have a slightly more bitter flavor.
Either way, they're both super hot,
so exercise prophylactic measures like gloves and glasses,
especially if you're doing this in a mortar and pestle,
because it could squirt you in the eye
and you would of course, diet immediately.
Now we're just gonna pound and process that together
until it is a chunky paste,
one that we can slather onto our awaiting chicken.
Tossing it together and trying to rub it underneath the skin
as much as possible,
then covering and refrigerating for at least four hours,
and up to 24.
Now for comparison,
I also wanted to try some of the more popular recipes I saw
out there on the internet.
Most of these start with half a small roughly chopped onion,
the same four or five cloves of garlic,
the same tablespoon and a half of picked fresh thyme leaves.
And then some rather interesting additions
like three tablespoons of dark brown sugar,
then alarmingly a lot of these recipes
call for pre-ground allspice, or even five spice powder.
The green and white parts of few roughly chopped scallions,
the juice of three limes,
which is gonna help flavor and tenderize the chicken.
And the one I'm most curious about,
half a cup of dark soy sauce.
This is obviously gonna bring a lot of flavor,
but also help with the color.
Now we're gonna process that together
just before we remember that we forgot some stuff,
a couple of tablespoons of a neutral flavored oil,
like canola or vegetable,
a few twists of freshly ground black pepper.
And of course the Scotch bonnets, duh.
After narrowly avoiding ruining our marinade,
we're gonna pulse that together
until it is a pretty smooth paste.
Give it a taste for seasoning,
don't forget a solid tablespoon of kosher salt.
Go ahead and dump it over the chicken
and massage to incorporate,
likewise before marinating overnight in the fridge.
I like the more liquidy form factor of this marinade,
but I'm not sure about the flavors.
So let's see how they stack up
after a stint on the Traeger.
On the left, we've got our traditional marinade
and on the right, our newfangled food processor version.
And while the newfangled version has much better color
from the soy sauce and sugar,
its flavor's got nothing on the traditional stuff.
This soy sauce kind of drowns out all the other flavors,
and the pre-ground allspice lacks the florality
and the Szechuan peppercorn-like tingliness
of the freshly ground stuff.
But the only problem to tackle then is color,
which if you want to stick with a fully traditional version
is easily fixed a little bit of oil.
This helps brown the chicken much more nicely
in the convection heat of the Traeger Grill.
Same marinade, a little bit of oil in the one on the right,
and marked improvement.
And it's every bit as absolutely delicious as the original.
Now I want to sort of hybridize the two recipes
so that we end up with something
that's the best of both worlds.
We're gonna start by pressing together
our whole allspice berries and black peppercorns.
You can do this in either a mortar and pestle,
a spice grinder, or a pepper grinder.
And then we're gonna switch over to the food processor.
And you'll notice that I have six red Scotch bonnets.
I like the color of the red peppers more,
and supposedly they're a little spicier.
And if you're jerk chicken
doesn't give you a full-on flop sweat,
you're doing something wrong.
Next up, we're adding four whole cloves of garlic,
roughly chopped, our three roughly chopped scallions,
and tablespoon and a half of freshly picked thyme leaves.
And I'm gonna add the brown sugar,
but downing it to two tablespoons,
likewise, with the soy sauce, just one tablespoon.
And I'm going to add a quarter cup of canola oil
and our freshly ground spices.
Process that together until it forms a chunky paste.
And as you can see the all red Scotch bonnets
give it a nicer, more celebratory color.
Same deal, toss it with the chicken,
wrap, and fridge, ideally overnight,
during which time we can contemplate our sides.
Jamaican rice and peas is a favorite
and starts with one 13 and a half ounce can of coconut milk,
two and a quarter cups of water,
and one 15 and a half ounce can of red kidney beans,
liquid and all.
Traditionally this is made with pigeon peas,
but here in the States, those are pretty hard to find.
Bring this mixture up to a simmer
before adding two cups of rinsed long grain rice,
along with three or four cloves of garlic, smashed,
one of our whole Scotch bonnets,
if you want to bring a little bit of heat,
two scallions cut into long batons,
two or three whole sprigs of thyme,
and a couple generous pinches
of our ground allspice and black peppercorn mixture.
Give this a stir, bring it back up to a simmer, cover it,
crank the heat all the way down to low,
and cook according to your rice's
manufacturer specifications
until liquid the is almost fully absorbed,
and the rice is tender.
Add a little more water if the rice isn't quite done
and cook for another five minutes.
Season generously to taste with kosher salt,
cover it up and keep it warm until ready to serve.
Another excellent accompaniment
are fried green plantations.
I got three big old green plantains here
that I'm going to laboriously peel
and cut into roughly one inch pieces,
which we're going to fry, smash, then fry again.
We've got about a half inch of oil
heating in a heavy bottom fry pan.
Once shimmering we're going to carefully add our plantations
and let them fry about one minute on each side
until they're a beautiful shade of gold
and are lightly browned top and bottom.
Let them drain on some paper towels.
And while they're still warm, but handleable,
we're gonna smash using a heavy flat thing,
like a sauce pan.
Not too hard, you don't want to make planting pancakes.
You just want them to be about a quarter inch in thickness.
Then they're headed back over to the oil
where we're gonna fry them again.
This time to crispy on the outside,
soft on the inside plantain perfection.
About a minute per side, once again,
draining on paper towels and salting immediately
while still warm.
These make for a lovely snacky starch.
They're gonna help you handle the heat
of your impending jerk.
Speaking of which, our chicken is headed out of the fridge,
where it is now ready for the smoker,
which brings us to our final question, the smoke.
Real jerk chicken is smoked over pimento wood,
very difficult to come by here in the States.
So the closest we're gonna get is nice fruit wood,
like apple or cherry, both of which,
and many more, are available for Traeger's Pellet Grills.
Speaking of which, it's finally time to get smoking.
You could just bake this chicken in your oven,
but just like barbecue made in your oven,
it's just not gonna have the real flavor.
And unlike a traditional smoker,
the Traeger is very controllable,
even at high temperatures,
and it's technically a convection oven,
so it's gonna brown our chicken skin beautifully
while keeping the meat moist and tender.
You can even use a meat probe,
which I'm going to insert in the thickest part of the breast
plopping these guys on the grill,
and setting an alarm for 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
Close it up and do not open it.
Optionally, once the chicken hits 145,
I like to give it a flip to brown the skin.
Just flip them on over and give them a few more minutes
until the breasts register 155
and the dark meat registers about 175.
Once those temperatures are hit,
it's time to pull them off
and admire that beautiful burnished color
that can only come from a real smoker.
Let them rest for about 10 minutes before digging in.
And don't even think about pulling out
this temperature probe until then.
Then all there is left to do is plate up
with a big pile of our rice and peas,
a few of our crunchy salty fried plantains,
and some of our juicy, tender, very, very spicy chicken.
Everything on this plate is gonna love
a little bit of freshly squeezed lime juice,
and some scallions for garnish.
And there you have it, jerk chicken
with plantations, rice and peas,
a thing of absolute unparalleled, spicy beauty.
Squeeze a little bit of lime juice over top of everything,
and dig in.
And this stuff is outrageous,
mostly because of the smoke,
and because we ground our own allspice berries.
I can't emphasize enough what a difference that makes.
The coconutty rice and starchy, crunchy plantations
are a great way to cool off between bites of chicken.
And the chicken of course is juicy and spicy.
And ooh, is just me, or is it getting hot in here?
Thank you again to Traeger for sponsoring today's episode.
Wood-fired food just tastes better,
and Traeger's Wood Pellet Grills make it easy,
even for a beginner.
All you have to do is set your grill temperature
like you would your oven and let Traeger do the rest.
Plus you can use the Traeger app
for precise temperature control anytime,
and to get more recipes in the palm of your hand.
To learn more, go to traegergrills.com
and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
The link is in the video description.
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