WALKERSWOOD Jerk Seasoning HOT & SPICY wings

My folks are snowbirds - every winter they head down to Florida and stay there for a few months. When they come back, they often bring me gifts of items or products that we don't have here. In 2019 they came back bearing gifts and one of the items was Walkerwsood Jerk Seasoning. I love jerk chicken, but had never made it at home. "This would be great on wings!" I thought to myself.

Now that first jar I used on chicken thighs, and it was amazing. Then I discovered we can buy Walkerswood in Canada. I kept making thighs but never wings. Recently it's been 3 of us eating in the house, so when I went to do the thighs, I didn't really think there was enough for all of us and all the marinade, so I used it as an excuse to add some wings.

Walkerswood, which I keep incorrectly calling Walkers, is a Jamaican company that's been going for years:

"WALKERSWOOD CARIBBEAN FOODS BEGAN IN 1978 WITH TWO GUYS SELLING JERK PORK ON THE SIDE OF A ROAD. TODAY WE HAVE MORE THAN 80 EMPLOYEES AND DISTRIBUTION INTO NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE, NEW ZEALAND AND THROUGHOUT THE CARIBBEAN." 

This is the most common product I see of theirs in grocery stores where it generally retails for almost $5 a jar. They come in Mild and Hot & Spicy, and I only get the Hot & Spicy kind, because, why would you not?

The bottle is 289g and is imported from Jamaica, so I feel like it's authentic, at least, commercially authentic. The best jerk chicken I've had was scratch made from a friend from Trinidad and it was amazing. This is the best I can get from a jar I'm pretty sure.

The ingredients are natural and full of flavour: "Scallions, scotch bonnet peppers, salt, black pepper, all spice, nutmeg, citric acid, cane sugar, thyme leaves." Now the 280g bottle may not seem like a lot, but it does a fair amount of chicken.

First off, jerk seasoning, let alone jerk chicken, is not pretty. You open the jar and it's brown and not that appetizing to, say, a North American palette. But the aroma is so spicy (I use spicy both in seasoning and in heat) and intoxicating. It smells fruity and not, pungent and not. It's so very hard to describe but bottom line, it smelled good!

They call it a "seasoning" but to me, this is a marinade. It's a thick paste that you rub into your meat and let marinate for some time.

It's thick, and slowly pours out. I like that, because it's not water-down. Every inch is flavour. You can see the spices and mixed in little burst of red colour from the scotch bonnet peppers.

While they recommend 1oz (28g) of this marinade for 2lbs (or 1kg) of meat I use a much bigger ratio of sauce. I use the whole bottle. Traditionally, one would 'wash' the chicken (rinse it under water to remove blood, juices etc) and then cut slits all over the chicken to maximize the marinade, but I wanted the skin intact for both the wings and the thighs. They also recommend adding oil, but I skip that too.

I did rub that chicken good, trying to coat every nook and cranny, get under the skin of the thighs a bit too. 

After massaging that chicken I did a thorough hand wash, then covered the bowl and put it in the fridge to marinate over night. Often when I'm making the jerk thighs I'm not well prepared and only marinate them a few hours before. I wanted them to sit overnight and really suck up that jerk.

The next evening I was very ready to start grilling. Now in a perfect world, I would have done these on a charcoal grill over an actual fire. You want that char and smell that only comes from charcoal. But I only have a gas grill, so gas grill it was.

I got my propane up nice and high so that when the chicken hit the metal grates, there was immediate sizzling. I wanted to heat them at high heat, crisp the skin as much as possible without burning (because this marinade will burn), flip, then cook for longer on lower heat.

 It was cold outside, but the smell and the warmth from the grill made it very tolerable! The smell wafted out onto the street and people out for a night stroll or walking their dogs kept commenting how good it smelled!

My grill is very uneven in it's heat, so anything towards the back cooks faster than the front. I was proud of myself on this occasion because I usually put the chicken on and run inside to do something, coming out to a big fire from the chicken grease. 

Not this time - I was patient and just watched it do it's thing. I'm not only looking for the chicken skin to crisp up a bit, but I'm waiting to make sure the chicken reaches 165f or 75c. Back in the day I used to just go on gut and visual to take them off, but especially after I took a food safety handling course, temperature is the only sure way. Well, short of cutting into the bird, but I don't want to loose those juices so early. 

The wings are obviously much smaller than the thighs, so I had to watch out for them being cooked faster. If I had thought things out with my head instead of my belly, I would have put the wings on later to match cooking times, but I put them on at the same time.  In no time the wings were done.

I took the wings off the direct heat and put them all on the upper rack of my grill. After being bombarded with the drool inducing aroma of jerk and heat, I evoked my pitmaster privilege's and at a wing on the spot, in the cold, no plate, no napkin. Just pure wingey goodness and burnt fingers. And my my was it good!

I recorded first bites: "That's so good! I don't even know what that flavour is. There's kind of a little tang, a little sweet, a lot of heat ... [the chicken] it's still juicy. Oh my gaaa, that's soo good. It's got some heat, it's got a lot of flavour, I don't know how you describe it. So tangy, garlicky, zing. It's good."

This was honestly probably the best wings I've ever had off my grill. It was everything you want in a Jerk wing: crispy skin, hot juicy meat. Bones pull apart easily. The flavour is all over the place and the heat is good. There's smoke, there's spice. Beautiful. When it comes to the thighs, they too turned out really well. Obviously more meat, and while I like it, the skin to meat ratio is much better from the wings. Dang, I'd eat this either way that's for sure.

WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

Yes. Easily yes. I've had it on thighs for a long time, but I'd argue it's even better on wings. Heat, flavour, it's got everything. 

Walkerswood Jerk Seasoning (Hot & Spicy)
walkerswood.com