Friday · cooks for Fri, Sat, Sun
Jerk Chicken with Coconut Rice and Peas
chicken thighs, scotch bonnet, allspice, kidney beans, charred corn, scallion butter
The one genuinely hot dish of the week, and even here the pot stays reasonable. The whole scotch bonnet in the rice perfumes without burning, and the extra heat sits on the table. Corn is at its cheapest right now and charring it hard is the best thing you can do to it.
Method
15 steps- Sunday: blend everything for the jerk paste until smooth, then set 1/2 cup aside for the table before anything touches raw chicken and jar the rest as the marinade.
- Leave the thighs in the freezer until Tuesday. Five days of raw poultry in the fridge is a few too many.
- Tuesday night: move the chicken from the freezer to the fridge to thaw.
- Wednesday night, while cleaning up: coat the thawed thighs in the marinade paste, bag them and refrigerate. Forty-eight hours is right for jerk.
- Friday: stir everything for the rice into the Instant Pot except the whole habanero, which sits on top uncut.
- Keep the pot no more than half full, since rice and beans foam. Lid on, high pressure 4 minutes, then natural release 10.
- Remove the habanero, the bruised scallions and the thyme stems, then fluff with a fork. It holds on Keep Warm for an hour without suffering.
- Air fryer to 380F. Lay the thighs skin side down and not touching, in two batches for nine.
- Cook 18 to 22 minutes total, flipping them to skin up at the halfway mark.
- Pull them at 185 to 190F at the bone, with the skin lacquered and blistered. Hold finished batches on a rack in a 200F oven.
- Heat cast iron until it is ripping hot, add the oil, then half the corn kernels in a single layer.
- Leave them completely alone for a full 2 minutes so they take real color.
- Toss and cook 2 minutes more, then turn them out and repeat with the second half.
- Off the heat, stir the butter, scallions, a squeeze of lime and the salt through all the corn.
- Loosen the reserved 1/2 cup of jerk paste with lime juice and a splash of vinegar, and put it on the table.
Why It Works
- 185 to 190F, not 165. Bone-in dark meat is full of connective tissue that only breaks down above 175F. Pull it at 165 and it is safe but chewy. Take it to 190 and it goes silky. This is the single most useful number in this plan.
- 380F, not 400F. The paste has real sugar in it. Twenty degrees higher and the exterior blackens bitter before the thigh is done through.
- Whole pepper in the rice. An uncut scotch bonnet gives up its floral aroma to the steam and almost none of its capsaicin. Cut it and you have made a different, much angrier dish.
- Blending the paste beats the jar. Walkerswood and Grace both work, but you would be adding the same fresh scallion, thyme, lime and allspice to them anyway, so you would be paying for the salt.
Day Two
Chicken keeps 4 days. Pack Sunday's portion Friday night before you sit down: three thighs and the last of the rice into two containers. Corn is best stirred straight into the rice for the Sunday containers rather than kept separate.
Chicken skin side up on a rack in the air fryer at 350F for 6 to 8 minutes and the skin comes back genuinely crisp. The microwave turns it to rubber, so do not. Rice: a splash of water, covered, 3 minutes in the microwave, or 5 minutes covered on low on the stove. Corn back in a dry skillet for 2 minutes.
Red Stripe, or a dark and stormy
Two ounces of dark rum over ice, topped with a good spicy ginger beer and a lime wedge. The ginger meets the allspice head on and the sweetness takes the edge off the habanero.