x @melissafood | Jerk Chicken Legs 2 x 300g

We have teamed up with food writer Melissa Thompson, author of Motherland: A Jamaican Cookbook, to create Jerk Chicken. Marinated for 24-hours in a mix of pimento (allspice), thyme, Scotch bonnet chillies, garlic, ginger, and black pepper, the meat is delivered to you ready to be cooked on the barbecue, though it can also be cooked in the oven.

Jerk, as a stand-alone term, describes the preparation, marination, and smoking of meat. However, the dish’s symbolism runs deep.

Jerk is central to Jamaican cultural identity; it tells the story of the island’s history and the passionate resistance of its people against slavery. Jerk is a true legacy dish.

Maroons, African people who had escaped enslavement and fled to the mountains in search of freedom, formed resistance communities. They survived through agriculture and hunting wild animals. Along with the remaining indigenous Jamaicans, the Taíno, they developed a method of cooking in the ground with minimal smoke to avoid detection by the British, who were trying to recapture them. They foraged for natural ingredients to season, preserve, and flavour the meat.

Jerk is a beautiful dish of balanced flavours, a bit of heat, and loads of depth. The marinade penetrates the meat right to the bone, and the flavour intensifies during the smoking process, resulting in a full-on hit on the taste buds.

Traditionally in Jamaica, jerk is cooked slowly over pimento wood, smoking and steaming under cover of more wood or zinc. Instead of pimento wood, Melissa lays a bed of bay leaves and thin bay branches onto the grill—away from the coals and direct heat—and places the meat on top. She soaks a couple of tablespoons of whole pimento berries in water and throws them on the coals just before closing the lid; the combined effect of the pimento berries and bay lends a flavour that is really reminiscent of cooking over pimento.