Jerk Chicken

Jerk traces to the Maroons — escaped enslaved Africans who fled into Jamaica's Blue Mountains in the 17th and 18th centuries and merged African slow-cooking with Taíno pit-smoking of meat (the Taíno word 'barabicu' became 'barbecue'). Pimento wood was abundant and free in the hills. The technique was a survival method: smoke preserved meat, the spices masked any off notes, the underground pit hid the fire from British patrols.

A fiery staple that dances on your palate, jerk chicken is as much about the marinade as it is about the smoke from the grill.

Chicken pieces blackened on the outside, pink-stained near the bone from allspice, with bark that crackles. The marinade is a wet paste of scotch bonnet, allspice berry, thyme, scallion, ginger, garlic — capsaicin heat with a numbing back-throat note from allspice. Properly cooked it's smoky from pimento wood, not just charred. Served with festival (a fried sweet dumpling) or rice and peas.

Pimento wood (Pimenta dioica, the allspice tree) is the load-bearing element — the same tree provides the berry in the marinade, so smoke and rub speak the same language. Authentic jerk is cooked over green pimento wood and leaves laid across a steel drum or ground pit, low and slow, so the smoke is camphor-sweet rather than acrid. Hardwood charcoal alone cannot fake it.