Friday, August 14, 2020

Making Jamaican Jerk Chicken

I've been making lots of Jamaican jerk chicken. 

The marinade is store bought. Walkerswood Traditional Jerk Seasoning. (My local stores ran out for over a month, probably cuz of covid. So I found it on amazon, in larger quantity, and less than half the price per unit weight.)

I use a wood pellet grill (Traeger Pro 575, which has wifi and a phone app for monitoring and controlling the grill).

Here are the steps I follow:

  1. Marinate overnight. (Lately I've been reducing the potency of the marinade by mixing 1 part olive oil with 2 parts marinade.)
  2. Cook 2 to 3 hours at low temp (around 185F), which smokes the meat. 
  3. Flip the meat. Insert probe. Set to 450F. Cook until the internal probe reads 205F. 
  4. Check if there are any pieces ready to be removed, possibly flip, then continue cooking for another 10 minutes.
    1. Repeat cycle until all pieces are removed.
When are the pieces ready? I like crispy skin and some black char. My kids like it less cooked than I do, so I remove some pieces earlier in the process for my kids.

Some notes:
  • I've done this basic recipe many times, with many variations. In some cases I've had extra marinade which I added on the chicken after the low temp cooking phase. I don't know if this is a good idea. My thinking is that I'm getting more jerk seasoning onto the meat. 
  • I learned this recipe from a friend who said that he sometimes scores the meat before grilling. He said it's for cooking the inside meat better. I thought it was for getting more jerk seasoning into the meat. 
  • The friend also sometimes cuts up the meat towards the end of the grilling (with a butcher knife going through even the bone), and adds it back on the grill. This is similar to scoring the meat before grilling.
  • I've done this recipe with chicken wings and leg quarters. I prefer the wings.

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