Are you looking for an overseas recipe? Here you will find one from Jamaica: Jerk chicken and rice and peas or jerk chicken and coconut milk rice with red beans. The complete recipe for a spicy and finished dish. With today’s recipe, I want to introduce you to a new world of flavors I could experience during my stay in London, the Jamaican ones! That’s right, today’s dish is typical of Jamaica, and I got to try it, prepared by my partner’s Jamaican brother-in-law and, therefore, by expert hands in the field. Jamaican cuisine uses spices, including allspice or Jamaican pepper, thyme, and ginger, fruits native to the island such as plantains, and incredibly spicy.
The ingredients used are very different from what we are used to, which in my opinion, makes this cuisine particularly fascinating. Jamaican cuisine is characterized by intense flavors and the presence of sauces used to marinate and flavor meat and fish, which is why rice is always present in the dishes as an accompaniment. In today’s dish, which is the Jerk Chicken or Pollo Alla Jerk, for example, a sauce of onions, ginger, thyme, pepper, soy sauce, lime, brown sugar, and oil to marinate the chicken is used, which can be cooked in the grilled or the oven and served with rice with coconut milk and red beans, properly called Rice And Peas. This mix of ingredients will probably make you turn your nose, but trust me, it’s a delicious and unmatched dish.
The marinade makes the chicken soft, juicy, and tasty thanks to the mix of spices; each element is designed to balance the individual flavors. Basmati rice with coconut milk is fragrant, and the taste is delicate and enveloping in the mouth, and thanks to the presence of the beans, it becomes more full-bodied and creamy. For a day, try to get out of your comfort zone, and you will see that what you find could surprise you and make you change your mind about many things. For me, the beauty of London was and still is that everyone seems to experiment and welcome with joy every type of culture, way of being, and food, without prejudice and without thinking about who comes from where, but valuing what one has of the front.
And together with my recipes and my blog, what I want to convey is precisely this, every human being, from wherever he comes from, can teach you something that is a lifestyle, a way of cooking, or a way of thinking it’s up to you to step outside your boundaries, experience it and make it yours. I did it and still am doing it, and today I want to be that person to help you do the same if deep down you realize that it is what you need too. Cooking dishes from different countries and cultures teaches many things. Still, above all, it is enlightening as it allows you to experiment with new flavors and ingredients you probably didn’t know existed. Ok, now it’s time to see the ingredients and the procedure together.
Ingredients For Four People
For The Chicken Marination
- Eight chicken thighs or three chicken breasts if you prefer boneless meat
- One large onion
- 6 gr of fresh ginger
- Two cloves of garlic
- a teaspoon of dried thyme
- juice of one lemon or one lime
- Two tablespoons of soy sauce
- Two tablespoons of oil
- Three tablespoons of brown sugar
- Three tablespoons of allspice or two tablespoons of pepper
- half a chili pepper (of your choice)
For The Rice
- 300 grams of basmati rice
- 400 ml of coconut milk
- a medium onion
- dried thyme to taste
- Two cloves of garlic
- allspice or pepper to taste
- 2 400g cans of drained organic red beans
For The Marinade
- To prepare the chicken marinade, put all the ingredients (onion, chopped garlic, ginger, thyme, lemon or lime juice, soy sauce, oil, sugar, and pepper) in a blender to reduce everything in a sauce that must be relatively dense. Taste the sauce and if it is too acidic, add some sugar. If you want to spice up your jerk chicken, add half a chili pepper, but for me, ginger is already enough for a sweet, spicy sensation.
- When the sauce is ready, pour it over the chicken and massage well to spread it over all the meat, then leave it in the refrigerator for at least 3-4 hours, preferably overnight.
- After the marinating time has passed, put the chicken in a baking dish, add (to taste) the chopped peel of the lime or lemon used for the juice and bake it in a static oven at 190 ° for about 45 minutes, covering it with aluminum foil or paper. Oven.
For The Rice To Prepare While The Chicken Is In The Oven
- Rinse the rice thoroughly with cold water.
- Then put the rice in a pan, add the coconut milk, finely chopped onion and garlic, thyme, and allspice or pepper, and finally season with salt and 300 ml of cold water. Turn on high heat until the water starts to boil, then cover and lower to medium heat and let it cook for 10 minutes.
- Then pour the beans into the rice, cover, and cook for another 5 minutes or until all the liquid has been absorbed.
When the chicken and rice are ready, serve them side by side, adding some Jerk sauce. It’s time to taste your Jamaican dish. What do you think? If you are satisfied with it or have any comments, leave them below.
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