Gastrolab brought you Jamaican peas and rice last time. Those with keen eyes would notice that I made a giant pot of peas and rice (either via the photo, or the recipe itself). As much as the peas and rice can be consumed as a meal by itself, I would like to have some more protein in the diet. I found some chicken wings in the freezer and decided to continue the Jamaican theme. Hence, the Jamaican jerk chicken wings are born in the lab. I have attempted jerking in the past (and some would argue that I am still "jerking" as we speak. To those I got one gesture for you, and you can guess which one... in all seriousness...). I have always thought that I won't be able to jerk it up at my house because I do not have the proper herbs and spices (notably, the scotch bonnet pepper) for the job, so I ended up buying store-bought jerk seasoning. Because I was able to source the scotch bonnet pepper, I figured I would give the homemade jerk a shot. To the research lab!
Clearly, my lab does not have the state-of-the-art ventilation and the lack of regulation required for a true jerk chicken experience (read: 55 gal drum retrofitted for smoking and grilling chicken, wood chips that generate enough smoke to take out 3 smoke detectors, and an open fire that would guarantee to get a nod from the insurance company...), so I settled for pan searing in a heavy cast iron skillet with very minimal oil.
During the entire cooking duration, I would bast the wings with the remaining marinate to keep it moist and full of flavors whenever I flip the wings. This would generate a lot of char on the pan so be mindful of that.
After a couple rounds of flipping and basting, the wings are done! As I mentioned before, the pan would have a lot of gunk on it. These are generated from the marinade. Note also that the marinade has now turn brown-- just like the stuff they sell at the store. After retrieving the wings, I toss in the remaining marinade and a little bit of water while the pan is hot and scrape everything off the pan with a whisk. Part of this is cleaning the pan, the other part is that the brown bits are very delicious. By partially converting it into pan drippings, we can get more flavors out of them. I think the French calls this "faun", but I'm not sure. The gritty dripping looks very much like the sauce I get from the store...
The final product: Wings with a bit of green scallion for decoration, and on the bottom is the gritty pan drippings I saved for dipping wings. That dripping is very spicy, but it's full of flavors. It goes great with steamed vegetable (I had microwave-steamed napa cabbage with the drippings and it brought new life to them) and obviously the peas and rice. The wings has a good jerk flavorings, along with some fairly pronounced lime juice taste and a bit of acid associated with the lime juice. I have had jerk chicken that have high amount of vinegar-type acid in it, and I have to say the lime juice is a lot smoother than vinegar. If my choice is between vinegar sour and lime juice sour, my choice would be the lime juice. Personally I like my jerk with less sour in it, so my next batch (whenever that may be) would have a higher ratio of the sweet fruit juice in it. That's more of a personal preference.
Bon apetit!
Note:
In my opinion, you can say Hail Mary nine ways til Sunday, and still be abominated for converting this into a vegetarian dish. Tofu just does not lend itself to this kind of cooking method. It's fragile, and the flavors would not permeate into the tofu at all-- the chunks and liquid that deliver the flavors are too big and too viscous to enter the sol-gel matrix that of tofu.
With that said, if you're hell bent (heh... pun intended) on turning this into vegetarian, here's several options:
1. Use mushrooms instead of tofu. You can still bast the mushroom with the seasoning while it's grilling and use that pan dripping sauce as a dipping sauce at the end. I recommend the portobello mushrooms for this job because it's big and beefy (heh, beefy in vegetarian food....)-- it's almost like meat!
2. If you really want to use tofu, choose fried tofu (you can purchase this at your local Asian market, and no, not the fried tofu puffs, please. Its texture is not beefy enough.). They tend to be sturdier. You can punch holes in the sol-gel matrix by placing the tofu in the freezer for at least overnight and then defrosting it. Placing the resulting (freeze-thaw) product in the marinade would improve flavor absorption inside the tofu.
These options has not been road-tested so your mileage may vary. Option 2 carries a much higher risk than Option 1, so tread carefully. With that said, if you ended up trying these options, please report how well it works in the comments. I would love to hear from you!
Wiki has a decent entry on the origin of jerk. The seasonings are spelled out as well. The soul of jerk are in the allspice berries and scotch bonnet pepper. Recipe searches comes up with this, this, this, and this at the very least. Most of these recipes call for some amount of acidic component (in the form of vinegar and/or lime juice) and sweet component (in the form of brown sugar, orange juice, sugar, and combination thereof) in addition the gamut of woody spices (allspice, thyme, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, etc.) and aromatics (onion, scallion/green onion, garlic, ginger, etc). After raiding my pantry and adjusting to scale and personal preference, below is the ingredient list:
Woody spices team:
1/2 - 1 teaspoon cinnamon
5 Cloves
1 teaspoon dried thyme
20 - 21 Allspice berries (about 1 teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Aromatic team:
1 1/4" - 1/2" piece ginger
1 clove garlic
2 green scallion
Liquid team:
1/4 Cup Lime Juice
1/4 Cup Pineapple Juice
1 - 2 tablespoon soy sauce
(I would change the ratio of the fruit juices for my next batch. See explanation below)
(I would change the ratio of the fruit juices for my next batch. See explanation below)
Other:
1 Scotch bonnet pepper
1 - 2 tablespoon brown sugar (that's the brick on top of the lime juice)
The team leader: 5 - 6 center cut chicken wings
The team leader: 5 - 6 center cut chicken wings
Mise en place. Chicken wing, soy sauce is excluded.
I chose lime juice over vinegar for the dish because I think the sour from vinegar is too harsh. Most jerk chicken around Philly actually do not contain a high level of sour. This is a personal preference. Also, I don't have orange juice at my house so pineapple would have to do. It's still a fruit juice!
The woody spices team minus the thyme
I threw all the whole spices into the mortar and pestle along with the dried thyme leaves...
After some anger management treatment, this has turned into a powder.
Scallion is chopped up. The ginger and garlic would probably disintegrate inside the blender on its own. You can chop them up slightly just to be safe. I cut the scotch bonnet in half and took the seeds out. WARNING: the scotch bonnet pepper can cause serious burns when touched, especially when it's cut open. DO NOT touch mucous membrane and sensitive areas (or anywhere that you care to save for future *maybe procreation* purposes) without proper decontamination after handling the pepper! Don't say I did not warn you! Twice! If you have read my previous post!
I then throw everything into the blender.
Now the ground herbs, nutmeg brown sugar and the liquids: Pineapple juice, lime juice, and soy sauce.
Top view: Same stuff, different angle.
Now we liquify inside the blender. I'm very surprised that the original marinade is green given that most of the times the jerk seasoning I bought from the store was brown.
I got 5 wings here. The marinate is no more than a cup so make sure each wing get a little bit of love. Why 5? That's how they came in when I bought them. The marinade could have taken 6 wings without problem.
Pour marinate in wing and swish around inside the plastic bag. This is the top view. I pushed a majority of the air out then tied a knot on the bag to seal. I set this in the sink with a bowl (in case the plastic bag leaks) for 1.5 hours. Other recipes call for a longer time, but their item also have a smaller surface area to volume ratio (read: larger pieces) so they would need to sit for longer for everything to get soaked up.
Total time elapsed: 2 hours 20 minutes
The final product: Wings with a bit of green scallion for decoration, and on the bottom is the gritty pan drippings I saved for dipping wings. That dripping is very spicy, but it's full of flavors. It goes great with steamed vegetable (I had microwave-steamed napa cabbage with the drippings and it brought new life to them) and obviously the peas and rice. The wings has a good jerk flavorings, along with some fairly pronounced lime juice taste and a bit of acid associated with the lime juice. I have had jerk chicken that have high amount of vinegar-type acid in it, and I have to say the lime juice is a lot smoother than vinegar. If my choice is between vinegar sour and lime juice sour, my choice would be the lime juice. Personally I like my jerk with less sour in it, so my next batch (whenever that may be) would have a higher ratio of the sweet fruit juice in it. That's more of a personal preference.
Bon apetit!
Note:
In my opinion, you can say Hail Mary nine ways til Sunday, and still be abominated for converting this into a vegetarian dish. Tofu just does not lend itself to this kind of cooking method. It's fragile, and the flavors would not permeate into the tofu at all-- the chunks and liquid that deliver the flavors are too big and too viscous to enter the sol-gel matrix that of tofu.
With that said, if you're hell bent (heh... pun intended) on turning this into vegetarian, here's several options:
1. Use mushrooms instead of tofu. You can still bast the mushroom with the seasoning while it's grilling and use that pan dripping sauce as a dipping sauce at the end. I recommend the portobello mushrooms for this job because it's big and beefy (heh, beefy in vegetarian food....)-- it's almost like meat!
2. If you really want to use tofu, choose fried tofu (you can purchase this at your local Asian market, and no, not the fried tofu puffs, please. Its texture is not beefy enough.). They tend to be sturdier. You can punch holes in the sol-gel matrix by placing the tofu in the freezer for at least overnight and then defrosting it. Placing the resulting (freeze-thaw) product in the marinade would improve flavor absorption inside the tofu.
These options has not been road-tested so your mileage may vary. Option 2 carries a much higher risk than Option 1, so tread carefully. With that said, if you ended up trying these options, please report how well it works in the comments. I would love to hear from you!
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