Jamaica: Bob Marley's Chargrilled-Jerk Chicken with Creamy Cucumber Dipping Sauce

Jamaica: Bob Marley's Chargrilled-Jerk Chicken with Creamy Cucumber Dipping Sauce

For this week's Travalogue we were off to Jamaica, mon. I went digging way back into my archives for a family favorite and saw this very stained print out with the Food Network label on it and knew I had to make this.

I knew that "to jerk" a piece of meat was to slather it with a spicy marinade and smoke it or grill it. But I learned that it is not just a flavorful way to enjoy pork or chicken but that the indigenous peoples of Jamaica actually use this technique to preserve meats. The word charqui (dried meat) gave the name to both the Caribbean term jerk and the North American term jerky. Makes sense once you read it but I never put the two together.


Also if I were to make a truly authentic jerk chicken it would be "smoked over aromatic wood charcoal or briquettes. The wood ("pimento wood"), berries, and leaves of the allspice plant among the coals contribute to jerk's distinctive flavor."-Wiki 

Street vendors in Jamaica who sell jerked meat (usually chicken or pork) are able to smoke the meat because of an invention in the 1960's of making portable smokers from oil barrels cut in half lengthwise with hinges added and holes drilled into them for ventilation.

My recipe, or any Americanified version cannot come close to reproducing the flavor of the above smoking method so all I can do is make my favorite recipe and hope to get to Jamaica one day and have the real thing. 

The flavors in the following recipe from Bob Marley's Restaurant does a beautiful job of melding together the jerk spices for what is the best jerk marinade I have ever used (homemade or store bought). You get a lovely citrus flavor from the habanero, without a lot of heat, combined with warm spices like allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon, a bit of salt from soy sauce and sweet from atouch of sugar. You can up the heat level as much as your heart desires by adding more habanero or scotch bonnet if you can get them. The cucumber sauce is much creamier than a Greek tsatziki sauce because of the addition of mayonaise and is a marvelous contrast to the jerk spice. In all these years I have never changed a thing about this recipe so you know it must be pretty darn perfect. Enjoy!

Bob Marley's Chargrilled-Jerk Chicken with Creamy Cucumber Dipping Sauce

Original Recipe courtesy Bob Marley’s Restaurant, in Orlando, Fl., 2000

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the Jerk Marinade:

* 1 onion, finely chopped

* 1/2 cup finely chopped scallion

* 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves or 3/4 teaspoon dried thyme

* 1 teaspoon salt

* 2 teaspoons white sugar

* 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

* 1 teaspoon ground allspice

* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

* 2 habanero chiles or scotch bonnets if you can get them

* 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

* 3 tablespoons soy sauce

* 1 tablespoon cooking oil

* 1 tablespoon cider or white vinegar

* 2 pounds dark meat chicken pieces

* 1 recipe cucumber sauce, recipe follows

* Crispy Sweet Potato Chips

Directions

For the marinade:

Mix, in a medium size bowl, onion, scallion, thyme, salt, sugar, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, hot pepper, black pepper, soy sauce, oil and vinegar. Place the chicken pieces in a shallow baking dish and cover with the marinade. Marinate in the refrigerator overnight. Place the chicken onto a hot grill and grill until done (165 degree internal temperature.

For the cucumber dipping sauce:

*2-1/4 cups cucumber, finely diced

* 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sour cream

* 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons mayonnaise

* 1 tablespoon cider vinegar

* 3/4 teaspoon salt

* Pinch cayenne pepper

* 1-1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

* 1-1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic

Peel and seed cucumbers and roughly chop. Place in a medium size bowl with remaining ingredients. Mix well and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the use of their information.