in this video I'm going to show you my very well- tested recipe for Jamaican jerk chicken the way I make it is pretty close to how they would make it in Jamaica but I've added a few restaurant techniques that I think dial up the eating experience to something that is truly transcendent man it's so tender it just falls right apart to make it I'll start with some chicken specifically I've got four skin on chicken leg quarters in Jamaica they would chop down whole birds for this jerk but I'm leaving out the breast meat because even with proper technique breast meat ends up being dry pretty often leg quarters on the other hand are basically impossible to mess up and the eating experience is more tender and more juicy than breast they do usually come with some backbone attached though which needs to be removed so to do that I'll just use a pairing knife to slice under the backbone that'll expose the thigh joint then I'll just cut right into the middle of that socket there then make a long slice from top to bottom to remove the outer edge of the leg quarter that's got the chicken backbone attached to it from here I'll flip the chicken over so that the skin side is facing up then I'll use my finger to feel around for the joint in between the thigh and the drummy once I feel a little gap I'll use my pairing knife to slice right through that this will give me about eight pieces of chicken so next I'll grab some dry brine which for this amount of meat is 30 g of salt and 15 g of sugar then I'll very generously season both sides of the chicken if you're wondering why I'm using a dry brine before I add any marinade well it's because marinades taste great on their own but they lack enough salt to season this much meat adding some salt and sugar first gives us the two main benefits of brining number one it makes the meat tastier because there's more perceivable salt and number two it dramatically increases the amount of moisture that the meat holds on to during cooking which really pays dividends later on you'll see this thing's going to get juicy next I'll move this chicken over to the fridge to brine for about 15 to 20 minutes while I mess around with the jerk marinade to make it I'll grab a big bunch of fresh thyme then I'll prep it up by pinching my fingers at the base of the stem and pulling the stem through compared to picking off individual leaves this process gets you a lot more time in a lot less time of course there's going to be a few bits of stem in the mix once it's picked but that's not a big deal to break those down I'll just run my knife through the picked thyme three or four more times just to make sure that there's nothing woody making it into the marinade once picked and chopped a 1 oz clamshell should yield me about 25 g from here I'll throw the thyme into my food processor along with 50 g of garlic 50 g of scallions 50 g of sliced ginger and 50 to 75 g of deseeded habaneros in Jamaica they use scotch bonnets for their jerk marinade but those are hard to find in the US habaneros are a nearly perfect substitute though because they have the same Skullville score of like 300,000 and they have a very very similar level of tropical fruit flavor beware this dish is supposed to be spicy so if you're a soft boy who's a little bit beta when it comes to heat I would say sub in about 30 g of jalapeno and skip the habaneros next I'll add in 100 g of olive oil and 75 g of soy sauce then 50 g of brown sugar and 20 g of ground allspice next 5 g of cinnamon and 5 g of ground nutmeg then 8 to 10 g of ground black pepper finally I'll add in about 60 g of fresh lime juice which is somewhere between two and three limes depending on their size now the lid goes on and I'll spin this for about 1 minute or until the fibrous ginger is broken down and things are smoothish we definitely don't want a perfect puree here the final texture should be a little bit on the rustic side that is really freaking intense it like punches you right in the tongue flavor-wise it's pretty chaotic you get the lime you get the ginger you get the umami soy sauce and then the fruity heat of the habanero and then all of these warm spices that are super pungent everything is in your face and it's super intense but somehow it all works together next I'll snatch those chicken pieces out of the fridge then move them over to a medium bowl then add in about half of my jerk paste i'll mention that a lot of the recipes that I've seen on the internet don't use nearly enough marinade so I would recommend going for a full slather on this chicken like this next instead of marinating this in the bowl I like to lay out my chicken on a sheet tray so that it can dry out as it marinates overnight this leads to less steam during grilling and it makes the chicken skin much easier to render also like I said I want to go full slather here so if there's any large areas that are exposed go ahead and brush those with the remaining marinade left in the bowl once on the tray I'll move this chicken over to the fridge to marinate for about 24 hours oh what do you know i've got some TV magic chicken that's been sitting here since yesterday let's grab that and keep rolling oh also before we move on I'm going to move the rest of the leftover marinade into the fridge so that I can have it for saucing later on now after a 24-hour marinade you can see that both the chicken and the marinade have lost a fair bit of their moisture and things have a matte look to them that's ideal chicken that has a drier exterior won't stick to the grill grates as bad and it'll catch more grilled flavor speaking of grill I'm going to move this chicken outside to start cooking it but first I want to thank Trade Coffee for sponsoring this vid i love coffee i love drinking it i love smelling it i love consuming sweet treats alongside it and most of all I love going to my local coffee shop on the weekend to enjoy it in public but most days my coffee ritual is just me my drip machine and whatever bag of delicious coffee trade sent me that week if you haven't heard of it Trade is a coffee subscription service that connects you with some of the best local roasters from across the country you can browse through hundreds of different coffee options on Trade's website or you can take their quiz it'll just ask you a few questions about how you like your coffee how you brew it and other stuff and then Trade will recommend something that you'll most likely love if you don't like it though they'll send you something else until they get it right over the last two years I've just been letting them pick coffees for me and I've liked every bag that I've gotten so far truly this week I'm drinking a roast from Bean and Bean out of New York this coffee was ground to order and you know it's fresh just from how it smells and also from the roast date that's printed right on the bag right now Trade is exclusively offering my viewers 50% off your 1-month trial at drinktrade.com/brien that's drinkt r a d.com/brian for 50% off your 1month trial thank you Trade outside my gas grill is set up to mimic the drum grills of Jamaica which means low heat with tons of smoke to do that I set up my grill for two zone cooking on the left side I've got the burner turned up to high and I'll take out the grill grate and replace it with a metal smoker box on the other side I'm going to turn the burners to low and keep the grill grate on once the heat's set I'll fill the smoker box with a bunch of wood chips the chips that I'm using are pimento wood from Jamaica if you haven't heard of it pimento is the tree that grows bay leaves and allspice berries when it's burned it has a pretty distinctive aroma that's reminiscent of all spice and in Jamaica the coal that's made from this wood is what fills the drum grills used for jerking chicken i got my pimento wood off Amazon and if you want to go super authentic I'll link to that down below that being said I think regular old hickory or mosquite wood chips would also be fine in my opinion the type of wood doesn't make that much of a flavor difference what really matters is that you have some kind of wood flavor going into the chicken but Bri shouldn't these chips be soaked well theoretically soaking the chips lowers the chance that they're going to catch on fire during smoking but it also dramatically increases the amount of time that they take to get smoldering in my experience soaked chips can take up to an hour with this setup to come up to a full smoke and the chicken just isn't going to be on the grill for that long so I think dry are totally fine and if you see them threatening to catch on fire just throw some water on them it'll be fine okay once the grill's at about 300F and my smoker box is chief and hard I'll spray a ton of pan spray onto the grill or brush on some olive oil either way we need a lot of lube to keep the chicken skin from getting stuck to the grill from here I'll drop on my marinated chicken legs 2x4 skin side down now the heat underneath this grate is set to low but it also needs to be hot enough to make a sizzle when we drop the meat on otherwise we're going to get a lot of stickage on the chicken skin from here I'm going to slowly smoke/grill this chicken or jerk it that's what the cooking process is called you guys look it up so yeah I'm going to jerk this for about 10 minutes on the first side 10 minutes later when I check back and flip over one of these pieces you can see we've got some really nice grill marks and the skin has gotten nice and tight now I'll just flip over the rest of the chicken pieces and rotate anything that looks like it might be sitting in a hot spot to a cooler spot then I'll come back and brush the skin side that we just grilled one more time with some jerk marinade because during cooking we actually lose a fair bit of what's on the chicken to the grill grates okay once brushed I'll cover and cook low on the backside for another 10 minutes now while this chicken cooks I'm going to move back inside and turn my jerk marinade into a jerk sauce by dropping it into a saucepan over medium heat along with 50 gram of water from here I'll bring the whole mixture up to a hard simmer and cook it down for about 5 minutes this will unify the flavors soften the fibrous aromatics and sterilize things if you accidentally got the sauce contaminated with raw chicken during the brushing and after a quick simmer I'll move this over to my blender and pour in all the sauce from here I'll puree on high until things are smooth by the way if you don't have a big blender like this you certainly could drop an immersion blender into your sauce and puree it on the stove top or you could just leave it chunky and not spin it at all either way it's going to be good from here I'll grab a little squeeze bottle and move the sauce into that so that I can drop it down onto the cooked chicken with expert precision okay back outside it's been about 20 minutes since I dropped this chicken and things are progressing really nicely the skin is mostly rendered and there's some nice reddish smoke color building up on either side from here I'm going to flip this chicken over at least one more time and cook it for at least 10 more minutes the name of the game from this point forward is just slowly gently raising the internal temperature of the meat while not burning the outside so I'm going to flip it a few times here and there and just kind of babysit it like the dudes who are grilling chicken in a drum on the side of the road in Jamaica i know it's getting really close when it's got a deep mahogany red color and the fat is glistening like this i won't call this chicken done though until I check the internal temperature for me it should reach at least 185F at this temperature the fat inside of the dark meat has rendered and it should be pretty shreddable like the meat should pull off the bone with no problem most of the jerk chicken that I've had has only been cooked until the meat is safe to eat which is closer to 165F and that result is just chewy and lacks this level of juiciness once I got the chicken off the grill and inside I'm going to let it rest for 10 minutes before biting into it honestly dude it looks so smoked like it's like red i think that's how you know that it's pretty good the chicken itself is a pure delight but if you really want to play hard ball you got to go ahead and hit it with a long ziggy of that cooked sauce that we just spun up oh you guys I'm serious this is up there with any smoked meat on earth obviously Texas brisket is number one but this jerk chicken for me number two easily now let's taste it m it's sweet it's smoky it's got bright acidity from the lime you got this pungent ginger that just kind of hangs around the habanero heat builds and builds and builds and it's fruity and it's so good and then you're like "Oh no it's too much." I'm running out of ways to tell you guys that the food on this channel tastes good but just believe me when I look you right in the eye and say that this is some of the best chicken if not the best chicken that I've ever eaten if you guys like this video then you're going to love the video linked on the screen daddy YouTube picked it just for you obey the algorithm like and subscribe