I've got a spice mixture here and this is a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, thyme and all spice. The exact recipe, click below, a new page opens up and the recipe will be there and you get the actual amount for this there. I'm using dried spices because I keep this is in fridge for quite some time. So I prefer to start it with some dried spices.

So into the food processor that goes, then a couple of tbsp of cider vinegar. You need that kind of acid to balance out the sweetness from the sugar and the heat from the peppers. So I’ll throw that in, now at this point we’ll blend it.

At this point, you’ve got jerk sauce, a jerk marinade or a jerk rub. It’s not as dry as a spice rub that we would think of in North America and it’s not really a liquid marinade as I’ve said earlier, but this is the bases of the marinade. So at this point, you can put it into a jar and we’ll go ahead and use it right away, but I’d like to use a little bit of rum. You don’t have to—if you’re having aversion to using alcohol in your dishes, don’t put it in. I want to put it in, it seems to bring out some flavors that otherwise wouldn’t expressed and I really like that. And of course by time you put the chicken or the pork on the barbecue at 450 , the alcohol burns off immediately. So I like to put it in just a quarter cup of rum, it’s not that much. I would use dark rum if I had it because that adds another flavor component, I don’t have it today so I'm not going to put it in. We’ll just give this one last mix.

Great, so there you have it, Jamaican jerk sauce. Now you certainly could use this right away and put it on chicken or pork and marinade it immediately today. Don’t get too close to it right now because it is very strong. I’ll put in a mason jar and stick it in the fridge for 4-5 days before I actually use it. That gives all of the flavors here a chance to mingle together and they smooth out. It not as harsh, of you use it today, it’s really going to smack you in the head. A week from now, when you go to use it, it’s going to be a little bit more mellow and you’re going to get a lot of flavor rather than the needed heat and I think that’s a much better sauce. So, in it goes and there you have my homemade jerk sauce.

I really like it and its something that I use quite often. I use it on chicken thighs mostly and pork roasts. Put it on chicken thighs, leave it for four to six hours before you put it on the barbecue. I even buy massive chicken thighs all at once, a couple dozen chicken thighs when they’re on sale. I de-bone them, I used the bones to make stock and then I rub the jerk sauce on them, portion them out for dinner sizes and then freeze them and that’s something that you can pull out of the freezer really quickly on a day when you just don’t have time to cook anything else.

So, give it a try and like I said it’s just a starting point and you can play with all of the amounts as you go along. Thanks a lot for coming out and come back and we’ll do something else later.