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     Title: About Jamaican Brown Stew Chicken
Categories: Caribbean, Chicken, Info
  Servings: 1 text file

           chicken
           browning sauce

Jamaican Browning sauce used in the marinade and braising liquid
adds complex, savory depth.

Brown stew chicken is a rich and silky Jamaican stew. Of course,
stew chicken is not specific to any one Caribbean island, and while
different islands may have recipes that appear similar, there are
subtle but important differences. For example, a Trinidadian version
might be very similar to the recipe I'm sharing today, but
Trinidad's distinctive green seasoning would be added to the base,
while Haitian poule en sauce would omit browning sauce or sugar and
put more emphasis on the tomatoes and peppers. In Jamaica, what
defines brown stew chicken is that the chicken is seared in oil and
then braised in a brown gravy with sweet bell peppers and a kick of
Scotch bonnet, although the specific recipe can vary from kitchen to
kitchen.

Browning, a Jamaican kitchen pantry staple, is a sauce made from
caramelized sugar, heated until the sugar liquefies, smokes,
sputters, and nearly blackens. Home cooks will often make it from
scratch as a preliminary step to recipes like this stew chicken,
leaving it in the pan so they can sear the chicken directly in it,
or it's made in advance, bottled, and stored. By the time the sugar
is charred to the appropriate color, it's no longer an overtly sweet
ingredient; it can be a bit smoky, nearly bitter, and, when made
with dark brown sugar, it may have a hint of molasses. Spices are
sometimes added, but since browning has both sweet and savory
applications, I steer clear of additions.

Grace or Gravy Master brands are good Commercial Jamaican browning
sauces.

I used the bottled version of browning in this recipe because it's
more convenient; you don't have to dirty a pot and burn sugar, thin
it, and cool it just to add a tablespoon to your marinade. The
process, like making a good roux, can take a practiced hand, and the
residual sweetness can vary based on how dark it gets; if you burn
it, it becomes too bitter to use. However, that tablespoon is
crucial, so don't omit it: It helps the chicken take on a caramel
color when it's seared, which then gently seeps from the chicken
into the gravy to produce a beautiful dark copper color. If you add
a little more browning to the base of the stew, the gravy's hue
deepens to a lush mahogany.

You'd be hard pressed to find a Caribbean kitchen that doesn't rinse
their chicken, using both water and lime or vinegar. I'm not going
to ask you to spray down your chicken, as that's discouraged by the
CDC, but I want to note that this is a common practice, one that's
been etched into the muscle memory of many, many cooks, part of the
generational transfer of culinary knowledge and recipes. Cleaning
the meat in this way serves a purpose beyond eliminating harmful
bacteria; it also allows the cook to finish plucking feathers and
wiping away lingering bone fragments. Once the chicken is rinsed
clean, lime juice or vinegar is used again in the marinade itself
for acidity and flavor, and that's where I start with this recipe,
with an acidic marinade.

Traditionally Jamaican recipes have long overnight marinades with
all but a few ingredients for the final stew covering the chicken.
Everything is then scrapped off of the chicken the following day
before it's cooked and all the vegetables are reunited shortly after
when any liquid from the marinade is returned to the now-seared
chicken. I find that a shorter marinade yields the same results, and
I omit many of the vegetables in the final stew from the marinade,
as sauteing the vegetables in the searing oil helps to dislodge any
browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Once the vegetables and
aromatics are bloomed in the oil, I then blend in the reserved
marinating liquid.

Brown stew, like other chicken stews in Jamaica, starts with a whole
chicken cut up. If you're not partial to eating chicken wings that
are slathered in sticky gravy (although, if not...why not?) you can
reserve them for another purpose, like a chicken stock, or you can
substitute the whole chicken with all legs and thighs. When stewing
a whole chicken, the breast meat can get sad and dry if it's left to
cook along with the bone-in dark meat for the entire time, so
instead I call for adding the breast meat to the pot in the last 25
minutes of cooking.

Recipe by Jillian Atkinson

From: Serious Eats
 
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