Jamaican Brown Stew Chicken - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with jamaican brown stew chicken that's right i've been wanting to make this for a while since i absolutely love any kind of braised or stewed chicken recipes especially ones that have sort of the same similar flavorings as a jerk chicken and while i might make a few small adjustments next time this really did come out amazingly well and by the way this video is not going to contain any jamaican me hungry puns okay that would be too predictable although having said that fair warning watching this could definitely be making you hungry or at least i hope so and what we'll do to get started is go ahead and mix up our marinade which is going to start with a minced habanero pepper or scotch bonnet as it's actually referred to in the caribbean and yes those are very very hot and then to that we will add a whole bunch of freshly picked and chopped thyme leaves as well as some minced garlic and ginger along with some freshly sliced green onions all right mostly the light parts and then we'll save the green parts to mix in at the end of the recipe we are also going to want some brown sugar as well as some freshly ground black pepper and of course a generous amount of salt and then we will bring this home with some smoked paprika plus a little touch of allspice and then last but not least a very small splash of apple cider vinegar at which point we'll take a whisk and give this a mix and i call this a marinade but it's really more of a rub although it's too dry to be a wet rub and too wet to be a dry rub so i think what we're actually making here is a damp rub although that might not be the best phraseology but no matter what you call this once it's mixed up we'll simply set that aside and then we can move on to prep our chicken and for this i'm going to be using some skin on bone-in chicken thighs and some relatively gigantic ones at that and as we often do when we're working with chicken thighs i like to take a sharp knife and cut into the skin side all right that's the meat side we're going to go into the skin side and we'll make sure we're cutting perpendicular to the bone and we'll make two slices about an inch or so apart slicing all the way down until our knife hits the bone and not only will that allow this to cook a little bit faster but it's going to help our damp rub penetrate even deeper so i went ahead and did all eight it's probably worth mentioning that traditionally this is done with a whole chicken which works great because you got all those bones and connective tissue but i think by using the thighs we get all that anyway and then once our chicken's prepped we can go ahead and toss it one by one in our rub making sure both sides on each thigh are well coated and then once that's been accomplished what we'll do is wrap this up and let it marinate in the fridge overnight all right that is my official recommendation although from what i hear you get away with like four hours if you had to but personally i really do think longer is better so i went ahead and wrapped mine up and popped in the fridge for about 12 hours at which point we can pull it out unwrap it and start to brown it up but before we do that as we pull this out of the rub i like to take an extra minute and sort of scrape off any of the chunks okay we don't have to get it all but ideally i'd just like to brown the chicken here and then add the rest of our marination ingredients in later but either way we'll go ahead and brown up these pieces in a little bit of olive oil in a deep heavy skillet set over medium-high heat oh and by the way once these are brown we can put them right back into the same bowl so you don't need to do anything with that just set it aside until your chicken is nicely browned which because of that brown sugar we added is going to happen relatively easily so we will brown that thoroughly on both sides and then remove it to the aforementioned bowl and as we do that we're going to notice a lot of fat remaining in the pan which is a good thing because into that very flavorful chicken fat infused olive oil we will toss one diced yellow onion along with a generous pinch of salt and we'll cook that stirring for a few minutes or until it starts to turn golden brown and most of that color is going to come from the moisture released by the onions deglazing some of those brown bits off the bottom so we're not going to cook the onions very long at this point since those are going to be cooking for a while with the chicken so it's only going to take a few minutes for them to look a little something like this at which point we're going to sprinkle over one more spoon of brown sugar and then cook that stirring for a couple minutes more or until our onions turn a deeper shade of brown and that sugar caramelizes onto the bottom of the pan and becomes a very dark brown okay not black we don't want to burn it but we definitely want it dark brown and i didn't do any favor by using a black cast iron pan since it is not very easy to see on the bottom but hopefully you can see that dark brown caramel-like substance sticking onto my spatula and by the way make sure your chicken stock is right next to you because as soon as that happens before it burns we want to quickly but carefully pour in our chicken broth which is going to deglaze the bottom and stop any further browning oh and speaking of browning what we're actually supposed to do here is add a teaspoon or two with something called browning sauce which i guess is similar to like a kitchen bouquet type substance used to slightly sweeten but mostly color a sauce or stew or a stock but i didn't have that so to basically accomplish the same thing we'll just go ahead and caramelize a little brown sugar which will hopefully have just about the same effect and then besides the broth we will also add some tomato ketchup and some of the recipes i've seen also call for some diced fresh tomato which if you have it would be totally fine here otherwise i think the ketchup is more than sufficient oh and we'll also want to toss in a couple bay leaves and then what we'll do is wait for this all to come up to a simmer at which point if we're using them we can go ahead and toss in some veggies which for me will be some sliced carrots as well as some orange and yellow bell pepper and once we have those stirred in we can go ahead and nestle our chicken back in the pan along with of course any and all accumulated juices as well as those extremely flavorful bits that were in the bowl from our marinade and that's it the rest of this recipe is as easy as it is relaxing since all we're going to do is lower our heat to medium-low and simmer this gently for about an hour to an hour and a half or until our chicken is nice and tender and our sauce is reduced and thickened up a little and other than giving it the occasional baste or if you want you could turn the pieces over once in a while oh and the other thing we should do as a simmers is go ahead and skim any excess fat that comes to the top and fair warning there will be a lot of it but other than that all we're going to do is basically wait and watch and what we're watching is what i like to call the race right the race between the chicken getting tender and the sauce reducing and if the chicken wins the rice and becomes tender before your sauce is reduced as much as you want no problem we'll just remove the chicken and keep cooking the sauce until it's exactly how we want but on the other hand if the sauce wins the raise and it reduces down but the chicken still needs a little more cooking then all we need to do is add a little splash of water and continue cooking until everything's perfect in either way that is just you cooking so you watch you'll observe and you will adjust but every once in a while we get really lucky and our chicken gets tender at the same time our sauce reduces exactly how much we wanted which is exactly what happened to me this time and i know nobody likes a tie but here that is like the best outcome and then besides of course testing to make sure our chicken is nice and tender we will also taste and adjust our sauce just in case it needs a little more salt or maybe a little more heat which is when you could sneak in a little bit of cayenne if you wanted but i'm happy to report mine tasted exactly how i wanted so i went ahead and finished this up with some sliced green onions and i turned off the heat and stirred those in and that's it my jamaican brown stew chicken is ready to serve up which i decide to do on some steamed rice and green peas and of course we'll also want to spoon around some of our veggies as well as spooning over a generous amount of that amazing sauce and i finished up with a sprig of almost flowering time and that's it my jamaican brown stew chicken was ready to enjoy and that my friends really was incredible okay as you might suspect from the ingredients we used this is sweet and spicy and salty and very very savory and if you happen to like the flavors of jerk chicken you are gonna love this okay it does have a similar flavor profile although it is definitely sweeter and if i were to tweak anything for the next time i'll probably reduce the brown sugar amount a little bit and mostly that's because the onions and the carrots and the peppers also added some sweetness and of course like all stews this would be a great catch-all for whatever seasonal vegetables you happen to have hanging around or it might not be traditional but i could totally see some summer squash being really nice in this or even something like eggplants or maybe some small baby potatoes but anyway as usual all those additions will be up to you i mean you are after all the peter tosh of wood tinage and the point is i can't imagine too many things not being amazing in this incredible stew but anyway that's it my take on jamaican brown stew chicken a sincere thanks to the people of jamaica for letting me appropriate another one of their recipes okay you guys can go ahead and adapt any one of mine that's only fair and even though i didn't use the exotic and mysterious brownie sauce i still hope i did this recipe justice right i realize it's probably not that authentic but it sure was delicious which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 270,012

Rating: 4.9555593 out of 5

Keywords: Chicken, Jamaican, Brown, Stew, recipe, chef, john, food, Wishes, cooking, poultry

Id: 7Vu1i94l2Js

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/xscientist]

<droooool>

[u/dbvoegtle]

I’m making this right now and it smells soooo good. The caramelized sugar and allspice simmering with the chicken is a very nice combo.

[u/Dreadlocks-Rasta]

Lesser known Jamaican Classic