Sunny Anderson's Caribbean Chicken Wings _ Cooking for Real _ Food Network

**The Art of Jamaican Cuisine: A Journey with Spices and Flavor**

As I walk into a Jamaican restaurant in the States, I'm excited to see what's cooking up on the stovetop. And there they are - some delicious-looking Jamaicans enjoying their meal. I wonder what makes this food so special, and I'm about to find out. Let's take a closer look at the spices that make Jamaican cuisine so unique.

**The Power of Cayenne Pepper**

I notice a jar of cayenne pepper on the counter, and I know exactly why it's here. This type of pepper is known for its intense heat, which hits you on different levels of the tongue. It's not just a simple hot sauce; it's an experience that will leave your taste buds tingling. The cayenne pepper is mixed with other spices like fennel seed, ground ginger, and thyme to create a complex flavor profile that's quintessentially Jamaican.

**The Importance of Allspice**

Allspice is another key component of Jamaican cuisine, and I'm thrilled to see it featured prominently on the counter. This sweet but intense spice is reminiscent of licorice, adding depth and warmth to any dish. It pairs perfectly with other spices like cinnamon and nutmeg to create a flavor that's both familiar and exotic.

**Adding a Touch of Tanginess**

Now we need something to balance out the heat and sweetness - a squeeze of fresh lime juice! The juice of four limes is added to the mix, along with some orange juice, to create a tangy and refreshing flavor. This is where things start to get really interesting, as the acidity helps to cut through the richness of the other spices.

**Reducing and Glazing**

While the chicken marinades in the fridge, I take the opportunity to reduce and glaze my own jerk seasoning sauce. This sweet and spicy condiment will add an extra layer of flavor to our dish. By reducing the sauce down on the stovetop, I'm able to concentrate its flavors and create a rich, caramelized glaze that's sure to impress.

**The Art of Marinading**

I carefully place my chicken wings in a plastic bag, along with some of the marinade, and seal it up. This trick allows me to minimize waste and prevent any unwanted flavor drips on my fridge. By marinating the chicken for about 4 hours, I'm able to infuse it with all the flavors of Jamaica - from the cayenne pepper to the thyme.

**The Magic of Reduction**

While the chicken bakes in the oven, I attend to my reduction sauce. This involves heating up some of the marinade on the stovetop until it's reduced down and thickened, creating a syrupy glaze that will add an extra layer of flavor to our dish. The aroma wafting from the pan is incredible - sweet, spicy, and utterly tantalizing.

**The Final Touches**

With the chicken wings skin-side down on the baking sheet, I carefully bring out my glazed sauce and brush it evenly over the top. By doing this halfway through the cooking process, I'm able to create a crispy, caramelized exterior that's balanced perfectly by the juicy interior of the chicken.

**Timing is Everything**

As I flip the wings over to glaze them with the remaining marinade, I set my timer for 20 more minutes at 400°F. This will ensure that our chicken wings are cooked through and nicely browned on top - the perfect combination of sweet, spicy, and sticky.

**The Moment of Truth**

I carefully remove the baking sheet from the oven, and the aroma wafting from it is incredible. The flavors have melded together in perfect harmony, creating a dish that's both familiar and exotic. It's time to take a bite - I hope the anticipation was worth it!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI'm going to start our jerk marinade with h four cloves of garlic there and four stocks of our green onion um let me talk to you a little bit about jerk chicken a lot of times you can go to your grocery store and you can buy the marinade in a bottle and um you can use it for your chicken at home but let me tell you when you make one of your own rubs and your marinades at home it just really tastes a lot better A lot of filler and preservatives in the stuff that you buy at the grocery store too so the thing about jerk and I say this is jerk chicken is is everyone's got their own recipe everyone's got their own spice combination everyone's got their own way of doing it but the general thing with jerk chicken is it's sweet it's spicy it's a little Tangy a little bit of salt it's hitting your tongue in all levels all right now speaking of hitting your tongue you do not want to hit your tongue with this by itself that's why we're putting it in the marinade it's a habanero or Scotch bonnet pepper one of the hottest peppers ever you touch it with your hand and for the rest of the day I don't care how many times you you wash your hand do not touch your face I took a shower one time after uh cutting one of those open and uh got a habanero facial all right so into our jerk chicken marinade we're going to do some soy sauce some brown sugar some apple C cider vinegar and some honey it's going to really round out the flavors remember I said sweet spicy Tangy these are all going to really help out with that okay so we'll start with some soy sauce of course that's going to give you the nice deep salt flavor and a lot we're going to make a lot of marinade because half of this is going to marinade and then the other half right on top of the chicken we're going to glaze it it's going to be nice and crispy and brown in the oven really good flavors all right then of course the honey for the sweetness really had a good time in Jamaica you know uh the tourist side was cool you know waking up and heading to the bar to get your all inclusive drinks on but uh doing The Insider trip was really a lot of fun all right so some honey in there and brown sugar the reason I love brown sugar in my jerk marinade is it gives this really deep deep molasses flavor it's a deep sugar it's more deep than just your regular sugar like the white sugar I'm put that in there too this is all about packing the flavor in cuz it's going to marinate for about four hours all right I came back from Jamaica and of course you know I live in New York so it was all about trying to find a place to find some of those flavors and uh I always go to a spot on 23rd in the city called N Grill I mean there's a city in Jamaica called N Grill makes sense right all right so some apple cider vinegar every time I go in there I seem to run into a celebrity who knew right a lot of music uh singers and artists and stuff like that in there and I always see some Jamaican performers so I feel like if I go to Jamaican restaurant in the states and I see some Jamaicans there must be doing something right all right so here we go with our spices so this is some cayenne pepper and I'm really into heat hitting you on different levels of the tongue and some uh finnel seed here this is very licoricey it's a sweet but an intense licorice taste and a little bit of ground ginger it's going to add a little zip a little kick and then we're going to put in a little thyme as well I really love the way thyme tastes and so this is ground all spice all spice all over Jamaican food why comes from Jamaica a little bit more sugar now remember I said we've got the sweet going on we've got some heat going on now we need a little bit of Tangy all right so the juice of four limes goes in here and we're going to do the juice of an orange go ahead and get the store bought if you have it but fresh always tastes better to me all right go hang out at your local Fruit Stand and talk to the guy I talk to my Fruit Stand guy and every once in a while get some free Fruit smile goes a long way all right so that's all in there remember we've got it started with the garlic the green onions soy sauce brown sugar it's going to be really good your cayenne pepper and I've almost forgotten I touched the habanero peppers but I don't think I will tonight when I take a shower all right so that's all ready to go I'm going to get the chicken that we're going to marinade with that jerk seasoning and we're going to save some of that jerk seasoning to the side cuz remember we're going to reduce it down and glaze it over the top of the chicken about halfway through the cooking process it's going to look so good all right so let me get my marinade Bowl this is my trick right here anytime you're going to marinade in the fridge of course plastic bag means less marinade less waste and you can go ahead and put it in a plastic Bowl because what if you have a hole in your plastic bag you want to drip all that stuff all over your fridge you know so I got all these chicken wings in here get them in oh these look good they don't know what's about to happen to them they're about to take a trip to the the islands all right so this is like 7 lbs of chicken just in case you're wondering how many wings I'm doing 7 lbs all right this will do like a family of four or two really hungry people with some beers or cucumber juice that's on the way all right so there we go I'm going to put this in here and remember I'm going to save to the side about a cup I feel good about that so I'm going to put that in my little thing here my saucepan going to reduce that down later meantime I'm going to get this chicken all surrounded by the flavor so when it marinates it is ready to go in the oven and bake up that is a little bit of the marinade from our chicken that's in the fridge has been marinating for about 4 hours it's our jerk marinade a little bit of it it's going to reduce and glaze down on the stove so halfway through we're going to bring it out of the oven and throw it on top of our chicken that's already baking and it's going to make a nice crispy sweet coating it's going to be really good all right so we're just going to get these on wax paper put them on skinside down now you might say to yourself huh okay two reasons because halfway through we're going to flip them over and we're going to throw the glaze on top it's going to create a nice crust but when you start skin down what happens is a lot of the marinade will start to travel down towards the bottom which is where the skin is you'll get a nice caramelization going on on the skin before you flip it over so it's kind of working for you all right everyone's hanging out wash my hands get these in the oven it's time to glaze the chicken going to bring it out flip it over and turn it up to 400° for 20 more minutes so we can get that nice golden brown and sticky top I'm going to get my glaze on these chicken wings look really good now remember we marinated these put them in the oven at 350 then jacked it up to 400° for the last 20 minutes so we could go ahead and get our glaze on they're going to be really good nice sweet spicy see what this tastes like even though I already know not the hair only the chicken oh yeahI'm going to start our jerk marinade with h four cloves of garlic there and four stocks of our green onion um let me talk to you a little bit about jerk chicken a lot of times you can go to your grocery store and you can buy the marinade in a bottle and um you can use it for your chicken at home but let me tell you when you make one of your own rubs and your marinades at home it just really tastes a lot better A lot of filler and preservatives in the stuff that you buy at the grocery store too so the thing about jerk and I say this is jerk chicken is is everyone's got their own recipe everyone's got their own spice combination everyone's got their own way of doing it but the general thing with jerk chicken is it's sweet it's spicy it's a little Tangy a little bit of salt it's hitting your tongue in all levels all right now speaking of hitting your tongue you do not want to hit your tongue with this by itself that's why we're putting it in the marinade it's a habanero or Scotch bonnet pepper one of the hottest peppers ever you touch it with your hand and for the rest of the day I don't care how many times you you wash your hand do not touch your face I took a shower one time after uh cutting one of those open and uh got a habanero facial all right so into our jerk chicken marinade we're going to do some soy sauce some brown sugar some apple C cider vinegar and some honey it's going to really round out the flavors remember I said sweet spicy Tangy these are all going to really help out with that okay so we'll start with some soy sauce of course that's going to give you the nice deep salt flavor and a lot we're going to make a lot of marinade because half of this is going to marinade and then the other half right on top of the chicken we're going to glaze it it's going to be nice and crispy and brown in the oven really good flavors all right then of course the honey for the sweetness really had a good time in Jamaica you know uh the tourist side was cool you know waking up and heading to the bar to get your all inclusive drinks on but uh doing The Insider trip was really a lot of fun all right so some honey in there and brown sugar the reason I love brown sugar in my jerk marinade is it gives this really deep deep molasses flavor it's a deep sugar it's more deep than just your regular sugar like the white sugar I'm put that in there too this is all about packing the flavor in cuz it's going to marinate for about four hours all right I came back from Jamaica and of course you know I live in New York so it was all about trying to find a place to find some of those flavors and uh I always go to a spot on 23rd in the city called N Grill I mean there's a city in Jamaica called N Grill makes sense right all right so some apple cider vinegar every time I go in there I seem to run into a celebrity who knew right a lot of music uh singers and artists and stuff like that in there and I always see some Jamaican performers so I feel like if I go to Jamaican restaurant in the states and I see some Jamaicans there must be doing something right all right so here we go with our spices so this is some cayenne pepper and I'm really into heat hitting you on different levels of the tongue and some uh finnel seed here this is very licoricey it's a sweet but an intense licorice taste and a little bit of ground ginger it's going to add a little zip a little kick and then we're going to put in a little thyme as well I really love the way thyme tastes and so this is ground all spice all spice all over Jamaican food why comes from Jamaica a little bit more sugar now remember I said we've got the sweet going on we've got some heat going on now we need a little bit of Tangy all right so the juice of four limes goes in here and we're going to do the juice of an orange go ahead and get the store bought if you have it but fresh always tastes better to me all right go hang out at your local Fruit Stand and talk to the guy I talk to my Fruit Stand guy and every once in a while get some free Fruit smile goes a long way all right so that's all in there remember we've got it started with the garlic the green onions soy sauce brown sugar it's going to be really good your cayenne pepper and I've almost forgotten I touched the habanero peppers but I don't think I will tonight when I take a shower all right so that's all ready to go I'm going to get the chicken that we're going to marinade with that jerk seasoning and we're going to save some of that jerk seasoning to the side cuz remember we're going to reduce it down and glaze it over the top of the chicken about halfway through the cooking process it's going to look so good all right so let me get my marinade Bowl this is my trick right here anytime you're going to marinade in the fridge of course plastic bag means less marinade less waste and you can go ahead and put it in a plastic Bowl because what if you have a hole in your plastic bag you want to drip all that stuff all over your fridge you know so I got all these chicken wings in here get them in oh these look good they don't know what's about to happen to them they're about to take a trip to the the islands all right so this is like 7 lbs of chicken just in case you're wondering how many wings I'm doing 7 lbs all right this will do like a family of four or two really hungry people with some beers or cucumber juice that's on the way all right so there we go I'm going to put this in here and remember I'm going to save to the side about a cup I feel good about that so I'm going to put that in my little thing here my saucepan going to reduce that down later meantime I'm going to get this chicken all surrounded by the flavor so when it marinates it is ready to go in the oven and bake up that is a little bit of the marinade from our chicken that's in the fridge has been marinating for about 4 hours it's our jerk marinade a little bit of it it's going to reduce and glaze down on the stove so halfway through we're going to bring it out of the oven and throw it on top of our chicken that's already baking and it's going to make a nice crispy sweet coating it's going to be really good all right so we're just going to get these on wax paper put them on skinside down now you might say to yourself huh okay two reasons because halfway through we're going to flip them over and we're going to throw the glaze on top it's going to create a nice crust but when you start skin down what happens is a lot of the marinade will start to travel down towards the bottom which is where the skin is you'll get a nice caramelization going on on the skin before you flip it over so it's kind of working for you all right everyone's hanging out wash my hands get these in the oven it's time to glaze the chicken going to bring it out flip it over and turn it up to 400° for 20 more minutes so we can get that nice golden brown and sticky top I'm going to get my glaze on these chicken wings look really good now remember we marinated these put them in the oven at 350 then jacked it up to 400° for the last 20 minutes so we could go ahead and get our glaze on they're going to be really good nice sweet spicy see what this tastes like even though I already know not the hair only the chicken oh yeah\n"