Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale, on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I'm so excited to
finally share with you, my recipe or sort of my take on a Jerk Chicken.
I'm also going to serve it - because I always do - with some coconut rice with peas, which
I'll share with you later.
This recipe has been really highly requested, and if you came to my meet and greet at my
book launch party in New York, then you know that I really wanted to put this recipe in
my cookbook but I didn't because the spices were just so different than what was already
in the book.
And everyone was like, you have to share it anyway on Laura in the Kitchen!
So, I'm sharing it with you but please, the first thing you need to know, of course, is
that this is not by any means authentic, I've never been to Jamaica, the Caribbean, anything
like that, but if you do have an authentic version, I would absolutely love for you to
share it down below because I think it's always nice for not only me, but for everyone else
to kind of read what your food is like, you know, where you're from in the world.
So, this is my take on the chicken and I'll show you the rice later.
You will need some chicken, I prefer drumsticks, to me, bone-in skin-on drumsticks is what
I like to go for.
Now for spices, for my marinade, I've got ground allspice, ground cinnamon, dried thyme,
nutmeg, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, then I've got some fresh onion, fresh garlic, this
is a habanero pepper, soy sauce - grated ginger - a little light olive oil, or vegetable oil,
and some lime, fresh lime juice.
Now, I know there are a million different recipes for jerk chicken so keep in mind this
is just my version and also I know that traditionally it's made on a big grill, but I can't get
those same charred flavors, so roasting it, I get that same deep caramelized flavor but
without grilling it.
But you can grill it if you want to but you just have to keep an eye out that you're not
burning it.
Okay, let's work on the marinade.
Now I'm going to show you how I like to chop up my habanero because I don't like to touch
it if I don't have to, at least not while I'm cutting it, so what I do, is I'm going
to take it like so and use tongs, sort of like as a hand, and I just cut around the
side like so.
If a few seeds go in there, that's fine but I don't want all the seeds to go in there,
so I just like to take sort of a small knife and cut around it like so.
And I try to never touch it because you know that habaneros are very, very spicy and if
you touch it and then touch your eye or something it can be really brutal so, see!
Never touched the habanero.
So now pretty much all of my spices, my garlic goes in, my onion, this is just a yellow onion,
that goes in, you could even use scallions if you want to but Iprefer the regular onion.
I've got my soy, it is such a combination of stuff, isn't it?
Of flavors, but I promise they just work together so well and give you such a nice spicy chicken.
But it's not like so spicy, even though there's a habanero in there, it's weird how it works
when it's roasting in the oven.
You need about two tablespoons of a light olive oil or vegetable oil.
Then I've got my spices, get them all in there.
And this is going to make your house smell so fantastic.
And then about three tablespoons of fresh lime juice, I take about one small lime, it
does the trick for me.
Get that all in there.
You need to invest in one of these things, I know I use it backwards, but I just feel
like it works so much better, I don't know why but it does so just trust me on this.
Squeeze it all in here, and now all I'm going to do is I'm going to puree this and just
so you know - come on get on here - there we go.
I'm going to puree this and I'm also going to place my chicken into a plastic resealable
bag because I'm going to pour the marinade right on top so I'm going to do that and I'll
show you what it looks like when it's there.
That looks fantastic!
You can see it's mostly, you know, pureed, but if a few chunks are in there, it's fine.
Try to get it all out, sort of try to maneuver the bag so that it's all going in there.
You can, by the way, use different portions of chicken if you want to use thighs, bone-in
skin-on and breast, bone-in skin-on, you can do whatever you want, I just happen to love
my drumsticks so that's what I tend to use.
Squeezing it all out, and then you just need to give it a really good massage.
Like so!
Now, this really is best if you do it the night before and you let it marinate all night,
all day or whatever.
I"m going to leave it for probably about 4 hours or so and then I'm going to cook it
because the longer it sits the better, the more of that flavor of the marinade permeates
through the chicken, so I am just going to let this hang out in the fridge for about
4 hours or so and then I'm going to roast it, I'll show you what it looks like once
the marinating part has been done and then we'll get going on the rice too which is just
an amazing accompaniment to the spicy chicken, it's sweet and sticky, it's fabulous!
Alright, my chicken has been in the fridge for several hours, I've got my oven pre-heated
to 400 F, what I have here is a roasting pan, not dirty, it's just really old, and this
is one of my most treasured baking pans that I own because I feel like I've cooked so many
things in it it's got history of it's own.
Okay, all you need to do is just get my chicken and my marinade out, just like that, get a
pair of clean tongs, and you just move things around like so.
And this ll kind of like, you know if a little bit of the sauce scorches around the edges
and stuff, it's fine because you can just clean it right off.
Alright, just make sure that every piece is just well coated and of course you want to
do skin side up for this, so that the skin gets nice and crispy, but you see how I like
to move it around and just juj it in the sauce?
Excellent, alright, this just needs about 45 minutes at 400 degrees and I like to put
mine on the very top rack, I like to move my rack to the very top of the oven so that
the very top gets nice and scorched, so I'm going to go put this in and then we'll get
going on our sticky coconut rice.
Alright, for the rice, you'll need some long grain white rice, these are some pigeon peas,
they come in a can, if you can't find these, red kidney beans work just as well, you need
water and some full-fat coconut milk and a pinch of salt.
That is it!
Everything goes into a pan at one time which is so lovely, now my chicken does need 45
minutes and this does need only about 25, but the longer it sits the more sticky it
gets, which I really love, so if you like fluffy rice, I would wait until you're closer
to eating time ,but I like it really sticky so that's how I take mine, you put everything
in, and then my rice takes about 25 minutes to cook fully, so what I like to do, is I
like to bring this mixture to a boil, let it simmer on medium-low, covered for about
twenty minutes, then I turn the heat off and I just let it sit for another twenty minutes
and it gets perfectly sticky, the rice still has a little bit of texture to it it comes
out perfect every single time, and if you see that it looks like the coconut milk is
sort of splitting on top, do not panic because once this starts cooking and you keep giving
it a stir, it somehow just combines with the rice and it just comes out perfect every time,
so I'm going to let that go but like I said, bring it up to a boil on medium heat, bring
the heat down to medium-low, put a lid on, twenty minutes then you turn it off completely,
and you let it sit there until the chicken is fully cooked, and I'll show you what it
looks like when this is done, and the chicken is done and we can finish it off and get to
eating.
My chicken was in the oven for 45 minutes, you can see it's got really lovely darn and
golden brown, if you want to, if you feel like it's not getting crispy enough for you
after 45 minutes, you can always pop it under the broiler for a few minutes and it will
crisp it up right away, to me it doesn't make a difference, because as you can see my oven
gets it really nice and dark, but it's up to you.
My rice is also ready, now like I said, this is very sort of sticky, it's not fluffy rice
so this is how I personally like it so, what I like to do - I've already been snacking
on it - I could lie to you but I'm not going to!
What I like to do is I like to take my rice, I like to put this on my serving platter because,
of course I like to serve them together.
This is so good, this rice is so good and you don't only have to make it for this particular
recipe, I just love it really with anything, it's really good and it would go really well
with my jerk shrimp tacos, it would go really well with that with my mango salsa, it would
be delicious but today I'm going to show you how I like to serve it with my chicken because
to me, they just compliment each other, and then I just take my chicken and I kind of
just nestle that all around my rice.
I have another piece of chicken in here, I'm not going to add it to my plate because otherwise
it would mess up my beautiful sort of array of chicken to rice here, I actually made this
last weekend and I posted a picture on Instagram in the same dish and everything so I knew
that I had to share it with you guys.
I like to finish it off with some green onions, and that is it!
It's all in one pan and I serve it just like this, everything is together, it's just flavor
wise, it's gorgeous!
The chicken, I'm actually not going to just serve that because I've got another piece
in here, the chicken is so juicy, it's so juicy yet so flavorful and I love it so much!
Needs a little bit of rice though, and even though it's quite, it is spicy, it's not going
to knock you back and you can't eat it, it just somehow goes well with that allspice,
and the nutmeg and the cinnamon.
And then, you have the sweet sticky coconut rice to kind of balance it all, it is by far
one of my very very favorite things to eat in the entire world and when I make this,
I want to shake myself for not making it often enough because it's really really fantastic,
and everyone always loves it I always get rave reviews, and I hope that you guys enjoy
it too, go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get the written recipe, I hope that you enjoy
my version of a Jerk Chicken with Coconut Rice, I would love to hear from you if you
re-create this dish, share it with me on Instagram, Twitter, here in the comments.
Hope you've enjoyed spending time with me and I'll see you next time!
Bye!