Jerk chicken

Ingredients

Jerk marinade

• 6spring onions (escallion), roughly chopped
• 4–6scotch bonnet peppers, stalks removed
• 1small onion, chopped
• 6garlic cloves
• 1thumb ginger (30 g)
• 2 tbspfresh thyme leaves
• 2 tbspground pimento (allspice), plus 1 tbsp whole berries
• 1 tspfreshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tspground cinnamon
• 3 tbspdark soy sauce
• 2 tbspbrowning or dark brown sugar
• 3 tbspwhite vinegar
• juice of 2 limes
• 2 tspsalt, 1 tbsp coarse black pepper
• 3 tbspvegetable oil

Meat and smoke

• 1whole chicken (1.8 kg), split down the back, or 8 bone-in thighs and drumsticks
• a few pimento wood sticks and leaves, or 3 handfuls of pimento wood chips soaked 30 minutes

To serve

• festival, hard dough bread, or rice and peas
• jerk sauce made from 4 tbsp of the reserved marinade let down with 100 ml water and simmered 5 minutes

Directions

1. Blend every marinade ingredient except the whole pimento berries to a coarse, dark green paste. It should be thick enough to cling to a spoon and should smell of clove and smoke before it ever meets fire.
2. Score the chicken to the bone twice on each thick part. Rub the paste in hard, pushing it into the cuts and under the skin, and tuck the whole pimento berries beneath.
3. Cover and marinate in the fridge for 24 hours, 48 if you can wait. Reserve 4 tbsp of unused marinade for the sauce.
4. Set a kettle or drum barbecue for indirect cooking with a small bed of coals to one side, aiming for 150–160°C (300–325°F) in the dome.
5. Lay the soaked pimento wood on the coals. When it smokes steadily rather than flaming, put the chicken skin side up on the cool side and close the lid, vent over the meat.
6. Smoke 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours, turning once and topping up wood twice, until the thigh reads 80°C (175°F) and the juices are clear. Jerk chicken is taken well past the usual 75°C (165°F) so the meat pulls easily.
7. Move the pieces over the direct coals for the last 4–5 minutes a side to blister and lacquer the skin, watching so the sugar does not blacken.
8. Rest 10 minutes, then chop through the bone into rough pieces with a heavy cleaver on a board, the way a jerk pan man does it.
9. Serve in foil or on brown paper with festival and the jerk sauce spooned over.

Technique

• Jerk is a smoking method, not a sauce. The word comes from the Taino and Maroon technique of seasoning and slow-smoking meat over a pit; Boston Bay in Portland is its modern home.
• Pimento wood is the real flavour and it is hard to buy outside Jamaica. Its leaves, berries and green wood all go on the fire.
• Scotch bonnet gives fruit as well as heat. Habanero is the nearest chilli by species, but the flavour is thinner.
• Resist basting with sweet sauce during the long smoke; sugar burns bitter over two hours.

Substitutions

• No pimento wood: use oak or apple chips plus 1 extra tbsp of crushed pimento berries thrown straight onto the coals in a foil packet.
• Oven method: 160°C (325°F) fan for 90 minutes on a rack, then 8 minutes under a hot grill. You lose the smoke, so add 1 tsp of smoked paprika to the marinade.
• Reduce to 2 scotch bonnets, deseeded, for a heat level visitors survive.

Variations

• Jerk sausage and jerk fish, both sold from the same drum pans on the north coast.
• Boston Bay style, where the meat is cooked in a pit lined with pimento wood under a sheet of zinc.

History

Descended from a cooking and preservation method developed by the Taíno, the Indigenous people of Jamaica, and later adapted and carried on by Maroons, Jamaicans of African descent who escaped slavery and formed independent communities in the island’s mountainous interior from the 1600s onward. Meat was seasoned heavily with local allspice, called pimento in Jamaica, and scotch bonnet chili, then slow-cooked over pimento wood, both the smoke and the seasoning helping preserve it and disguise cooking fires from British colonial forces hunting escaped Maroon communities. The specific spice blend and pimento-wood smoking method that define jerk today developed and spread across Jamaica over the following centuries, moving from a survival technique into the island’s best-known culinary export.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jerk chicken?

Jerk chicken is a main from Jamaica: chicken in scotch bonnet-allspice marinade, smoked over pimento wood. Descended from a cooking and preservation method developed by the Taíno, the Indigenous people of Jamaica, and later adapted and carried on by Maroons, Jamaicans of African descent who escaped slavery and formed independent communities in the island’s mountainous interior from the 1600s onward. Meat was seasoned heavily with local allspice, called pimento in Jamaica, and scotch bonnet chili, then slow-cooked over pimento wood, both the smoke and the seasoning helping preserve it and disguise cooking fires from British colonial forces hunting escaped Maroon communities. The specific spice blend and pimento-wood smoking method that define jerk today developed and spread across Jamaica over the following centuries, moving from a survival technique into the island’s best-known culinary export.

How long does Jerk chicken take to make?

Jerk chicken takes 30 min plus 24 hr marinating of preparation and 2 hr of cooking. The recipe makes 4–6 servings. It is rated medium to make.

What can I substitute in Jerk chicken?

Yes, within limits. No pimento wood: use oak or apple chips plus 1 extra tbsp of crushed pimento berries thrown straight onto the coals in a foil packet. Oven method: 160°C (325°F) fan for 90 minutes on a rack, then 8 minutes under a hot grill. You lose the smoke, so add 1 tsp of smoked paprika to the marinade. Reduce to 2 scotch bonnets, deseeded, for a heat level visitors survive.

What is the most important thing to get right in Jerk chicken?

Blend every marinade ingredient except the whole pimento berries to a coarse, dark green paste. It should be thick enough to cling to a spoon and should smell of clove and smoke before it ever meets fire.