Alex Rotherham, of Bay Tree café in Bury St Edmunds, serves up a tasty marinade for jerk chicken

I regularly get asked questions like: what is my favourite thing to cook? What’s my favourite dish, or my best dish, or my signature dish? I find this last question extremely difficult to answer, as to me cooking is cooking, it’s all special, and my ‘signature’ is all over everything I do. Especially now that I am an owner chef, I get to refuse to cook what I do not want to.

So, I love to cook everything that I cook, but I will honestly say chicken is possibly my least favourite meat to cook, generally speaking.

I just find it typically boring. I prefer lamb, beef, prawns, fish and pork. All these have great flavour that stands on its own. Chicken just doesn’t do it for me, not without help.

I suppose my dispassion for chicken works for my customers, as I put extra effort in to making chicken taste nice.

Now there is a chicken dish that I have prepared in the past, but again am not able to currently offer at the café due to lack of proper equipment and ventilation.

I used to do Cajun chicken, as that is quite ubiquitous in Vancouver restaurants. Pretty much every chef has their own blend of Cajun spices. After several years, though, I got quite bored with it and it was just a mask on the chicken. There is something far better.

Jerk chicken!

This has the heat like Cajun chicken does, but has so many more layers, depth and nuance to it. It does not just put a spicy coating on the chicken, it transforms the chicken into an entirely different meat, and a truly gorgeous tasting one at that.

This is a dish that originates from Jamaica, originally from the indigenous population, but then adapted by the African slaves that had been freed and made Jamaica their home.

You will get either a dry rub or a marinade. I find my marinade the best route to go, especially for chicken. It is important to buy top quality spices here. I am often an advocate for store brand on many things, but I have found myself often throwing away entire jars of store brand spices for how horrible they turned out to be, sometimes just tasting like dust.

For the Scotch bonnets, spring onions and garlic, these all absolutely need to be fresh. Using dried will just fail the marinade completely. To make the marinade is quite simple – all you need to do is chuck all the ingredients into a blender and purée completely. Done!

A beautiful thing with this recipe, once prepared, it will easily hold in the fridge for several weeks. I would recommend dating it and drawing a line at one month, just to be safe. I admit that I have not tried freezing it, but I’ve never had a batch last more than a week anyway.

Now, for marinating the chicken. Properly, you would marinade whole joints of chicken, or even a whole chicken if you wish. I prefer to use chicken breast and thigh meat, fully deboned. How I choose to cook it will explain this. You want to weigh up the chicken meat you have and use 30 grams of marinade for every 200 grams of chicken. I tend to butterfly slice my chicken breasts and do not use the skin. I also flatten out my thigh meat.

I find it best to place the chicken in a large mixing bowl, pour the marinade over it, then with gloved hands toss and mix the chicken meat around in the marinade to get it all evenly coated. I then pack the chicken tightly in a rectangular container, making sure to press out any air pockets and top the chicken with some of the marinade. Wrap with plastic wrap and then store in the fridge for at least eight hours before using, ideally 24 hours.

As with other meats, you want the chicken at room temperature before cooking for the best finished product, so be sure to pull it out of the fridge an hour before cooking.

The way I cook jerk chicken is a combination of fry and bake. Preheat a fan assisted oven to 220ºC. Now this is important, we need a pre-seasoned cast iron pan, it absolutely must be cast iron. A new pan will work, all pans have to start their life somewhere, but a well-used pan is best, especially used for jerk chicken, as it actually does affect the flavour.

Heat the pan on maximum heat, add a thin layer of extra virgin rapeseed oil. Just as the oil starts to waver, the moment just before it reaches smoke point, add you chicken to the pan. It can be quite full, but you want to make sure not to pack it too tight as the chicken will steam instead of bake.

If the pan was hot enough, it should only take a few seconds to start browning off. You then want to flip all the chicken over and transfer to the oven. How long it will now need in the oven depends on the thickness. I typically find it will take between six-eight minutes. Easiest way to check is to break into the fattest piece and look. You could also use a temperature probe, you want a minimum temperature of 74ºC.

And that is your jerk chicken. I enjoy it best with basmati rice, corn on the cob and garlic bread.

RECIPE: Jerk Marinade

Ingredients:
50g Scotch bonnets, chopped
Half a bunch spring onions, chopped
15g fresh minced garlic
15g Chinese Five Spice
15g Allspice
25g black pepper, finely ground
Half a tablespoon fine sea salt
250ml soy sauce
30ml extra virgin rapeseed oil

Alex Rotherham is co-owner and head chef of the Bay Tree Café, in St John’s Street, Bury St Edmunds

Tel: 01284 700607

Facebook: baytreecafebury