Jerk chicken is the most well-known Jamaican dish to have been exported from the island. You know what I’m talking about: moist pieces of poultry that are full of soaked-up marinade flavor, with burnished skin and crispy, blackened bits of meat courtesy of the grill the bird is cooked on.
But if you’ve never had the chance to visit the tiny nation that jerk chicken hails from, then you’ve never really had the authentic dish. Here’s why: true jerk chicken is cooked not just over coals, but also over fresh green wood: most traditionally, wood from the pimento tree, which is native to the Caribbean and produces another very important jerk chicken ingredient—allspice berries, used in the marinade—or sometimes sweetwood, the Jamaican name for the laurel tree.
In Jamaica, the wood of these trees is essential to the jerk process. To cook the chicken (or the pork, also widely available at jerk joints), it all starts with the wood, which, in the form of charcoals, is laid under huge metal grates and continually stoked to stay roaring hot. Then, big logs of pimento or allspice wood are laid on top of the grates. The meat is placed directly on top of the green wood, then covered with big sheets of metal.
