![]() ![]() The soy sauce also penetrates the meat to provide a lovely savoury flavour. ![]() Willinsky’s dry rub goes up against the marinades used by Lucy Pilkington, Saveur, and a website called Jamaican Food, and while I don’t find that the acidic vinegar or lime juice in the marinades has any discernible tenderising quality, it does impart a pleasing tanginess (I prefer the lime juice to the vinegar in this respect: it tastes fresher). An article on jerk published in the New York Times explains, somewhat unappetisingly, that the dry rub makes for “a crustier jerk a wet rub produces juicier meat”. Her dry rub contains onion and spring onion, fresh thyme, salt, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper and scotch bonnet chilli peppers, while the marinade adds soy sauce, oil and vinegar. In her book Jerk Barbecue from Jamaica, Helen Willinsky says that a dry rub, rather than a marinade, is the “more authentic method of preparing jerk flavouring”. Much easier to do as US magazine Saveur suggests, and push the marinade right under the skin (although not too generously – I got a bit overenthusiastic and the layer of chilli purée lurking underneath one innocuous-looking thigh nearly blew a volunteer taster’s head off). She advises removing the skin to allow the marinade “to work its way right into the meat”, but, as the crisp, salty skin is one of the great joys of jerk as far as I’m concerned, I’m not keen. I like legs, but, as Lucy Pilkington, quoted in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat Book, says, a tray of drumsticks and wings works well for a big party where the chicken is going to be eaten by hand. The only thing to note here, apart from a plea to use good chicken that has enough flavour to stand up to this powerful marinade is that you need to leave the bone in for maximum taste and succulence. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that this is the only chicken recipe you should bother with on the barbecue – there’s not much else to touch it. Pork and goat are prime candidates for jerking, but I’ve chosen chicken because if ever a dish needed livening up, it’s grilled chicken. Today, you’ll find jerk huts all over Jamaica – indeed, you’ll probably smell them before you leave the airport – but, if you’re not hopping back to the island any time soon, it’s easy to get a taste of the Caribbean in your very own garden. (The name, apparently, is the Spanish version of an Andean dialect word for dried meat, ch’arki – presumably because the original jerk would have been smoked to preserve it.) Jerk’s distinctive seasoning – hot peppers, sweet allspice berries, thyme and ginger – however, is credited to the African slaves brought to the island by its Spanish and British colonisers, who also introduced the cooking pits which were traditionally used for jerk until the advent of the modern oil drum. Native to Jamaica, the tradition began with the indigenous Taíno people who would cook their meat over fires made from the aromatic wood of the island’s allspice trees – still the only way, devotees claim, to get that really authentic flavour (no one seems to import it the UK, so I’ll have to take their word for it). Let’s face it: spicy, crisply barbecued chicken or pork are an easier sell for most of us than hard food or stew peas. Serve the rice and the yoghurt sauce with the chicken.If you’re familiar with any aspect of Caribbean cuisine, then it will almost certainly be jerk. Remove the mango and peas from the EGG and mix them into the rice.Add the mango and peas, close the lid of the EGG and cook for around 4 minutes stir every now and then and close the lid of the EGG after each action. Heat the vegetable oil in the lid of the Green Dutch Oven. Remove the skillet with the jerk chicken from the EGG and set aside.Peel the mango, cut the fruit from the pit and cut into small blocks. Meanwhile, cook the rice according to the instructions on the packaging. Close the lid of the EGG and cook the chicken for another 10 to 15 minutes until it has reached a core temperature of 72☌ you can measure this by inserting the Instant Read Thermometer into the thighs. Mix 200 ml of warm water into the marinade you set aside and pour it over the chicken in the skillet.Mix together all the ingredients for the sauce and add salt and pepper to taste. Pick the leaves from the sprigs of parsley and chop finely. Cut the lime in half and squeeze out the juice. Turn the chicken legs over and fry for another 6 minutes until this side is also golden brown.Place the chicken legs with the skin in the skillet, close the lid of the EGG and fry the chicken skin for around 6 minutes until golden brown. Remove the chicken legs from the marinade and wipe the marinade off the chicken collect the marinade and set aside. Heat the vegetable oil in the Cast Iron Skillet in the EGG.Light the charcoal in the Big Green Egg and heat, with the Stainless Steel Grid, to a temperature of 190☌. ![]()
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