Jamaican Jerk Chicken

By Chef Phillip Schaaf

Jamaican Jerk Chicken is a dish that delivers on many different levels. It’s savory with a hint of sweetness. It is citrusy and sour with as much or as little spice as you’d like.

Spice it up

A traditional jerk marinade derives its heat from habanero or scotch bonnet peppers. Both of these peppers have a high amount of heat, but are also very fruity and delicious. I love hot peppers. I find them to be some of the most flavorful fruits available, but that flavor comes with a price.

Go easy your first time around and then raise the Scoville unit a little bit each time. Start with jalapeño and Serrano peppers; you’ll soon be looking for Carolina Reapers at your local farmer’s market.

The predominant flavors of the jerk marinade come from allspice berries and hot peppers, most traditionally the scotch bonnet. The longer the meat sits in the marinade, the more pronounced and nuanced the flavor becomes.

Hot peppers are hot. It is imperative to wash all surfaces, hands, knives, etc after processing hot peppers. The capsaicin oils spread easily, which can lead to many different unfortunate scenarios. Be careful and avoid contact with eyes and skin. It will cause irritation for a short but stirring period of time.

Cooking it up

Most traditional jerk recipes call for slow smoking the meat with wood from pimento trees, which will be a bit difficult and expensive to source. The closest we can cheaply get is to cook over semi direct heat on a charcoal grill, adding soaked wood chips to the coals periodically to give a more smoky flavor. Semi-direct heat means that the coals are pushed to one side of the grill and the meat is placed to just overlap the middle, resulting in a charred and crispy skin.

How to Spatchcock

For this recipe, I cooked a whole spatchcocked chicken. To spatchcock a chicken means to butterfly the whole bird. It’s very easy to do.

Just take a pair of good kitchen shears and cut through the rib bones right next to the bird’s backbone, exposing the cavity. Prepare the bird in this manor before marinating in order for the flavors to seep through to all of the meat easily.

Or just let Grass Roots' butchers take care of it for you with our Spatchcocked Chicken!

Why Spatchcock?

Spatchcocking the bird can reduce the cook times and even out the cooking overall, resulting in a juicier chicken through and through.

You can expect a whole smoked chicken to take about an hour to cook through, but definitely use a thermometer to monitor the internal temperature. You want the meat to reach 165° internally. Check the breast and the thigh. With semi-direct heat method, it is best to turn the chicken every 15-20 minutes so that the skin is nice and charred but not burnt. You can always finish with direct heat over the coals to crisp up the chicken before resting and carving.

Serve it up alongside some grilled pineapple and spicy Caribbean rice and peas with close friends and cold beverages.