Herb-wise, thyme seems to be the most popular choice: its woody flavour works well with the allspice and the smoke of the charcoal. Lucy, Jamie Oliver and Saveur also use fresh ginger, which apparently grows wild on the island, but I think the peppers provide all the sweet heat the dish needs: I don’t miss it in Helen Willinsky’s recipe. A robust 3, or a half for each leg, seems about right. Scotch bonnets are, of course, a must – how many is a personal thing, but I find Lucy’s recipe, which uses 2 chillies for 2kg chicken, too mild, and the Saveur recipe, which pops in a generous 8 – 1 for each chicken leg – rather too hot I can’t taste the allspice and the herbs. Spring onions are a common addition – the green tops give a fresher flavour than the yellow onions, shallots and garlic used by many of the recipes. With the matter of lime juice and soy sauce sorted, it’s time to consider some of the other ingredients. It is also a main ingredient in ‘brown stew chicken and fish’ another common offering at restaurants or cookshops that cater to Jamaicans.” It may not be an ingredient used by the Maroons, but it does taste damn good.) Herbs and spices Every little one room grocery store carries it. As in the States, Chinese laborers were brought in to build the railways. (If you, like me, scoff at the idea of soy in a Jamaican marinade, allow me to quote from a post on this very subject on the food forum egullet: “Sorry but Jamaicans sure do use soy sauce, called soya sauce here. The soy sauce also penetrates the meat to provide a lovely savoury flavour. Willinsky’s dry rub goes up against the marinades used by Lucy Pilkington, Saveur, and a website called Jamaican Food, and while I don’t find that the acidic vinegar or lime juice in the marinades has any discernible tenderising quality, it does impart a pleasing tanginess (I prefer the lime juice to the vinegar in this respect: it tastes fresher). An article on jerk published in the New York Times explains, somewhat unappetisingly, that the dry rub makes for “a crustier jerk a wet rub produces juicier meat”. Her dry rub contains onion and spring onion, fresh thyme, salt, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper and scotch bonnet chilli peppers, while the marinade adds soy sauce, oil and vinegar. In her book Jerk Barbecue from Jamaica, Helen Willinsky says that a dry rub, rather than a marinade, is the “more authentic method of preparing jerk flavouring”.
#JERK CHICKEN RUB SKIN#
Much easier to do as US magazine Saveur suggests, and push the marinade right under the skin (although not too generously – I got a bit overenthusiastic and the layer of chilli purée lurking underneath one innocuous-looking thigh nearly blew a volunteer taster’s head off). She advises removing the skin to allow the marinade “to work its way right into the meat”, but, as the crisp, salty skin is one of the great joys of jerk as far as I’m concerned, I’m not keen. I like legs, but, as Lucy Pilkington, quoted in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat Book, says, a tray of drumsticks and wings works well for a big party where the chicken is going to be eaten by hand.
The only thing to note here, apart from a plea to use good chicken that has enough flavour to stand up to this powerful marinade is that you need to leave the bone in for maximum taste and succulence. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that this is the only chicken recipe you should bother with on the barbecue – there’s not much else to touch it. Pork and goat are prime candidates for jerking, but I’ve chosen chicken because if ever a dish needed livening up, it’s grilled chicken. Today, you’ll find jerk huts all over Jamaica – indeed, you’ll probably smell them before you leave the airport – but, if you’re not hopping back to the island any time soon, it’s easy to get a taste of the Caribbean in your very own garden. (The name, apparently, is the Spanish version of an Andean dialect word for dried meat, ch’arki – presumably because the original jerk would have been smoked to preserve it.) Jerk’s distinctive seasoning – hot peppers, sweet allspice berries, thyme and ginger – however, is credited to the African slaves brought to the island by its Spanish and British colonisers, who also introduced the cooking pits which were traditionally used for jerk until the advent of the modern oil drum. Native to Jamaica, the tradition began with the indigenous Taíno people who would cook their meat over fires made from the aromatic wood of the island’s allspice trees – still the only way, devotees claim, to get that really authentic flavour (no one seems to import it the UK, so I’ll have to take their word for it). Let’s face it: spicy, crisply barbecued chicken or pork are an easier sell for most of us than hard food or stew peas. If you’re familiar with any aspect of Caribbean cuisine, then it will almost certainly be jerk.
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