Jerking it

I love jerk chicken.  In fact, I love Jamaican food.  Jerk chicken, curry goat, popperpot stew, Saturday soup, I love it all.  There’s something ever refreshing about cooking without cream or thickened sauces, avoiding thick and sticky glazes and having hot food without it being nose-pinchingly spiced.

Ideally jerk should be cooked on a half oil drum barbecue, but whilst I hunt down and build one of these, I use a bog standard BBQ.  This time annoyingly the rian started just as a lit up, so this chicken was cooked in the oven.

I followed this jerk chicken recipe from the from Helen Grave’s brilliant blog Food From the Rye, which I’ve been addicted to for a little while.  The only modification I have was to drop the dark sugar and molasses, and to replaced it was a big tablespoon of golden sugar, and about 50ml of dark rum.  I didn’t have dark sugar in, otherwise I’d have used it, but I would still keep the rum in.  Lots of things are soluble in alcohol that are not soluble in water, so using rum not only adds to the smoky and sweet flavour, but I believe also helps carry the flavours through the meat better.

I took a whole chicken, spatchcocked it to help fit it on the BBQ, and kept it in a tight plastic bag with the marinade for a full 24 hours before cooking.  The bag holds the marinade against the meat and excludes the air.  You need to pick up the bag and squidge it about to made sure all the chicken gets exposes, and turn it so that the top is not left out of the fun.  I also slashed the chicken deeply a few times to help get the flavours into the meat.

On the day of cooking I took the chicken out of the fridge for a few hours to come back to room temperature, and opened the bag to help lef the meat dry off a bit.  Ideally I’d have BBQ’d it indirectly over the coals (push them to one side, and put a tin tray under the meat to catch the drips).  This time however, I had to use the oven, 180 degrees for an hour covered, with 30 minutes on the end uncovered, and then resting for 20 minutes.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Homemade flavoured spirits
• Slow baked ham with cider and spice
• Give us this day our daily bread(maker)
• Home-brewed time-lapse fungus growing 101
• Hot and sour manly popcorn