I first sampled true jerk almost twelve years ago during a visit to Jamaica. I was making my way back from Runaway Bay to Kingston and stopped for lunch at one of Jamaica’s landmarks: Faith’s Pen. The brightly-colored food stalls at this roadside stop serve island classics like ackee and salt fish and cornmeal porridge. The air was thick with plumes of smoke emanating from oil-drums-turned-grills. The aroma was of fruit set ablaze.
I headed to a stall run by an older woman and ordered some straight-from-the-nut coconut water and jerk chicken. That first bite ignited my curiosity. “What is that sweetness?” I asked myself. “How can one piece of chicken possibly be this complex in taste and texture?” I was rapt.
Caribbean history tells us several stories about the origin of jerk. One holds that it was born from the enterprise of enslaved Africans who escaped to freedom to the mountainous interior of Jamaica. Known as Maroons, these individuals hunted wild pigs, and cooked the meat in smoldering pits buried in the earth so as to conceal their location. As fuel for their makeshift earthen ovens, they used the sweet wood of the pimento (allspice) tree. The Maroons also leveraged the pimento tree’s leaves and berries, as well as ginger, thyme, scallions and scotch bonnets, to flavor the meat. These ingredients, which still grow wild in Jamaica’s verdant tropical interior, form the basis of jerk.
Of course, jerk’s history is as complex as its flavor. Credit is also given to the Taíno, one of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, and many historians trace the beginnings of jerk to Peruvian charqui, or jerky.
The origins may never be fully known. Still, freedom and fire, sweetness and smoke—these will always be jerk’s unapologetic signatures.
Jerk Potato Salad: simple yet complex, with just the right amount of soul and spice.
Today, the jerk I make at home in Raleigh, N.C., doesn’t carry the national pride of being grilled and perfumed with freshly-cut pimento wood. Nonetheless, the flavors are still penetrating, robust, and comforting to my immigrant family in our moments of homesickness. The warm, earthy spices (nutmeg, cumin, allspice and cinnamon) are roused by the aromatic heft of ginger and garlic, and brightened by the punch of citrus. And at the heart is heat—in this case from piquant habanero chilies.
