Snoop Dogg Yardie Yardbird
This is one of the better looking ones
While I’m not a big fan of spice, I took a chance on this recipe
Difficulty: 1/5
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Time: 1hr 40 minutes (excluding marinating)
Here’s another recipe from the Snoop Dogg cookbook. Apparently it is a Jamaican Jerk Chicken inspired dish, which honestly gave me second thoughts early on (I’m not a spicy food person). However, the seeds of the habaneros are removed and only two are used in the whole dish, so I was betting on the spice level being fairly low. I had bought a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters and I thought this recipe would be a good way to use some of them. Plus, who doesn’t want another quick and easy chicken recipe to add to their arsenal?
Key Ingredients and Omissions:
The only ingredient that I didn’t use was thyme, which I substituted with oregano. Otherwise, everything else was as prescribed. (I did forget to take a picture of the ingredients)
Instead of breaking down a whole chicken, I just used what I had, some chicken leg quarters. This doesn’t change the recipe in any appreciable way.
Tools:
Bowl or Plastic Bag for Marinating
Roasting Pan
Cooking Review:
Making the Marinade: 40 Minutes
This is where most of the ‘cooking’ takes place. I prepared all the ingredients for the marinade and blended them together before pouring it into a bag full of 5 chicken leg quarters. You really could do this step in less time than I did, but peeling the ginger did take longer than I expected. I will say that after blending the marinade, it smelled great. The peppers became very fragrant along with the ginger and garlic, giving it a fruity yet savory aroma.
Baking: 57 minutes
After letting the chicken marinate over night (20 hours), I placed the pieces on a roasting tray with draining slots in it. I let it cook for nearly an hour, as It wasn’t really getting as dark as I wanted. As you can see, the finished product could have still used a little more color. I recommend you cook your by eye.
The chicken ready to be baked
Analysis:
First off, my bet paid off. This chicken wasn’t spicy at all, which I was very happy about. However, I recognize many people associate jerk style chicken with spice, so if that’s what you’re after, maybe leave in the seeds from the habaneros or add one or two more habaneros. Other than the spice, the chicken was juicy and tender, likely a result of the marinade and the lime juice in it. The flavor profile was completely new to me, being slightly sweet and largely herbal/earthy. In my opinion, this combination was a good thing. I just wish that the flavors were a little more pronounced. While the ginger flavor is obvious, the best parts were the few and far between parts that were darker and caramelized. So, if I had let this cook for even longer or even raised the temperature, I think the flavors would have been even better. The texture would improve as well, there really wasn’t much textural interest in this dish. All being considered, I’ll give this recipe a 8/10. I’ll take part of the blame for not cooking it even longer, although this may have made it less juicy (which I think would have been a small price to pay for enhanced flavors). The flavors were unique and interesting while coming together with very little effort. There really isn’t too much more that I could ask for from this one.
Looks Like my Oven is Pretty uneven
