Easy Jerk Chicken Meal Prep Bowl

This bowl is full of island flavor Jerk chicken cooked in the oven, served with roasted plantains, Jamaican rice, and peas, and then topped with spicy-sweet pineapple salsa.

Jerk Chicken is easy!

To make jerk chicken in the oven, simply rub the chicken with jerk spice rub and roast it. This is the easiest jerk chicken recipe ever! When you pull this lovely bird out of the oven, the result is a crispy-skinned bird with a beautiful spicy Jamaican flavor.

I roast the chicken on a baking rack over a heavy sheet pan. This allows air to circulate under the bird. Pro tip: You can use this rack technique for a cut-up fryer or for just a bunch of chicken thighs or breasts that you might be cooking up for your weekly meal prep.

Wait a second; my chicken doesn’t look like that!

How’d you get it so flat?

For this beast bowl, I decided to share a technique that I use all the time in my kitchen – spatchcocking. Besides being super fun to say, spatchcocking is an easy way to reduce the time that it takes to cook a whole bird. By spatchcocking the bird, you can get seasoning easily all over the meat, and your chicken ends up nice and crispy and evenly cooked. As a bonus, it’s also super easy to carve.

How to Spatchcock, a Chicken

To spatchcock a bird, you will need a nice pair of kitchen shears to cut the backbone out of the bird. This is very easy. Using the kitchen shears, just cut along either side of the backbone and pull it out. Next, turn the bird over and press it flat. Congratulations, you have spatchcocked your bird! See easy!

The raw backbone in this photo will go into a stockpot with carrots, onions, celery, a few spices, and the ‘extras’ that always come inside your chicken.

I will also add the remainder of the carcass from the bird after it is carved. See my recipe for bone broth to see how to make this healing staple.

Quick and Easy Jamaican Rice and Peas

Jamaican Rice and Peas is a traditional island staple. This Caribbean flavored rice has a mild coconut flavor and is usually made with pigeon peas. However, sometimes these are hard to find in your local grocery store so I’ve substituted small red beans.

Pineapple Salsa

If you spend any time around my house for dinner you will know that I love salsa. Chips and salsa are one of my snacking weaknesses. Salsas add a bright, spicy flavor to anything. Traditional salsa Fresca is something that I almost always have in the fridge for eating on eggs - or anything.

This pineapple salsa is so good!

I love the sweet pineapple paired with savory ingredients.

I chose to use serrano peppers in this salsa – they are spicier than jalapeños and have a sharp bite to them. They are my preference in any salsa, but I know everyone doesn’t love things as I do.

In this salsa, however, the serranos are toned down because there is so much sweetness from the pineapple. The beauty of making your own salsa is that you can dial in the spice just the way you want it!

Roasted Plantains

I roasted my plantains in a cast-iron skillet in the oven right alongside my chicken. They came out perfectly done. While everything was cooking in the oven I made the rice. Then while the rice was simmering, I made the salsa.

How to prep this Power Bowl

1. Preheat oven.
2. Spatchcock chicken, rub it down with jerk seasoning, get it in the oven.
3. Peel and cut up plantains, get them in the oven.
4. Make rice while the chicken is cooking.
5. Once the rice is on simmer, make salsa.
6. Make sure to keep an eye on chicken and plantains while cooking rice and making salsa.