Quick and Easy Jerk Chicken Recipe

Jerk chicken marinade recipe

I wanted to go ahead and get my jerk chicken marinating because it needs to marinate for a few hours before we cook it.

Here are all the spices that we are going to need to make this marinade for Jamaican jerk chicken.

I am using black pepper, extra-virgin olive oil, thyme, white wine vinegar, brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, ground ginger, ground sage, and ground allspice. All the recipes that I looked at called for scotch bonnet peppers. I could not find scotch bonnet peppers, so I substituted them with two habanero peppers.

I'll mix this in my little blender cup to make a paste.

I have my habanero with the seeds and ribs removed to go in first.

I'll use one tablespoon of olive oil, one tablespoon of soy sauce, one tablespoon of white wine vinegar, and one tablespoon of thyme.

I then added a tablespoon of brown sugar, three teaspoons of ground allspice, one teaspoon of black pepper, one teaspoon of ground sage, one teaspoon of garlic powder, one teaspoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of chili powder, and a half a teaspoon of ground ginger. I'm going to put the lid on and blend everything.

Chicken prep

I have two pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs that I will be using for this recipe. I will get them into my container so I can get that jerk rub on the chicken thighs.

I'm going to marinate this in my fridge for several hours.

Jerk chicken habanero dipping sauce

For the habanero dipping sauce, we'll use salt, brown sugar, vinegar, half an onion, the juice of a lime, one habanero, one clove of garlic, and about a fourth of a cup of pineapple juice. This was supposed to be a scotch bonnet sauce, but we've got the habanero.

The recipe says to take your blender or food processor and don't clean it from the marinade. I've got one more habanero. So I'm going to get that chopped and in the blender cup.

Now I have my habanero in that blender cup. I'm going to chop half of an onion and one clove of garlic.

I will add two ounces of pineapple juice and an eighth cup of white vinegar with one tablespoon of brown sugar, a teaspoon of salt, and the juice of one lime.

I'll put the lid back on, blend it, and then heat it in a saucepan.

The sauce smells delicious, kind of like a sweet and sour sauce. I'm going to put this in my little sauce pot and simmer it for 15 minutes.

Cooking the jerk chicken

So it's been several hours. After I let that sauce simmer on the stove for about 15 minutes, I let it cool, then put it into a container and in the fridge.

So that was the sauce with the habanero, the pineapple, the onion, the garlic, and brown sugar. We have that done, and then we marinated our chicken and all of that jerk seasoning, which used tons of spices. Now we are ready to get this cooked.

It smells spicy. It smells spicy, like hot. There's a lot of spices in it. Since it's threatening to rain now, I'm not going to put it on the grill. I'm going to bake it in the oven. I have my oven preheated to 400 degrees.

We're going to place the marinated chicken thighs on a sheet pan and get them ready to put in the oven.

These are the boneless, skinless chicken thighs I've had hanging out in that jerk marinade all day. I'll swish them in the marinade, then place the thighs onto our sheet pan. I'll spray the pan with oil first so my chicken doesn't stick.

Finally, I'm going to put these chicken thighs in the preheated 400-degree oven.

I'm going to let them bake for about 30 minutes and then check their temperature. You want their internal temperature to be at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit. I'll start checking those in about 30 minutes.

The finished jerk chicken

Here is the chicken out of the oven after 30 minutes. I will use my meat thermometer to check, and I'll use the piece that's the thickest. I'm going to let this chicken rest for just a few minutes, about 5 -10 minutes.

It is so juicy. Let's get some sauce on the plate.

Here's that pineapple habanero sauce.

Taste test

Let's give this a taste. Okay, I've got that jerk chicken slice with that pineapple habanero sauce.