Jerk Chicken (3)

Tasted fine, but Yas said that this wasn't "real jerk chicken"

Ingredients

  • 4 boneless. skinless chicken breasts
  • about 2tbsp of sunflower oil
  • 3 Scotch Bonnet chillies
  • fresh root ginger
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp ground allspice
  • 1 tbsp ground coriander
  • 1/2 tbsp nutmeg
  • 1 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
  • small bunch of thyme
  • 1 lime
  • 3 tbsp of dark rum
  • 2 tbsp of olive oil
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Make 3 or 4 diagonal slashes on the skinned side of each chicken breast, about 5mm deep
  2. For the jerk seasoning, deseed and roughly chop the chillies, peel and grate the ginger, peel and crush the garlic.
  3. Put the chillies, ginger and garlic into a food processor with the dry spices, sugar, 1/4 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper. Strip the thyme leaves and add them to the spices. Grate the zest from the lime and squeeze the juice, adding both to the mixture. With the motor running, add the rum and enough olive oil to make a smooth spreadable paste.
  4. Spread the chicken breasts all over with the jerk paste and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, and up to 3 hours.
  5. Heat a large frying pan with enough sunflower oil to lightly cover the bottom. Scrape the excess jerk paste off the chicken breasts and discard it. Add the breasts to the hot pan slashed side down and fry until well browned, then repeat on the other side. Reduce the heat and continue to cook, turning occasionally until the breasts are cooked through, this will take about 10 minutes.

References

Leiths How to Cook (p353)