Spicy Jerk Chicken: Recipe and Critical Temperatures for Delicious Chicken

Every culture has a dish or two that are mainstays of their kitchen. India has curry and dal. Mexico has mole and tamales. Germany has a pantheon of sausages. And Jamaica has Jerk: jerk chicken, jerk goat, jerk pork. If there’s a dish more iconically Jamaican, it’s hard to think of. The method and the flavor have deep roots in Jamaican history and culture, and people from the island have brought that tradition with them wherever they’ve settled in the world.

Now, no one on our staff is of Jamaican descent, but we’re devoted admirers of all the world’s great dishes. So here, we bring you our rendition of delicious jerk chicken, full of the delicious spice and flavor of the original, if somewhat inauthentic for reasons we’ll discuss below. But this is a great approximation of the actual Caribbean treat that you can make at home, and one that, with our temperature advice, you can cook just right the first time. Let’s take a look!

What is “jerk?”

History and cultural significance

“Jerk” began as a method of pit cooking wherein meat would be cooked in a pit over hot coals. It evolved from the needs of indigenous people and escaped slaves who where hiding in the mountainous interior of the tropical island. This ember-cooked food became a mainstay of celebratory and, eventually, everyday cuisine. But according to Jamaican chef Gariel Ferguson, “Jerk is [still] freedom manifested in food.”

There are about 740,000 people of Jamaican origin—immigrants themselves or the descendants of immigrants—living in the United States. For people living in Jamaica and abroad, jerk is an important part of Jamaican culture. It is eaten not only as an important part of holiday celebrations, but is an everyday symbol of their culture, a reminder of both oppression and freedom, of ingenuity and endurance. And for millions of people around the world with Jamaican heritage, it’s a taste of a home left behind.

(For an excellent look at the history and significance of Jerk cooking to Jamaican culture, see this Brief History of Jamaican Jerk.)

What jerk means today

Jerk eventually moved out of in-ground pits. If you’ve ever visited Jamaica, you’ve probably seen the jerk pan men with their converted oil drum smokers on the corners, serving hot, fragrant meat to passers-by. But moving to more portable and modern cooking methods hasn’t meant a change in many aspects of jerk cooking. The spice palate remains: lots of allspice (called pimiento in Jamaica), fresh thyme, nutmeg and/or mace, and as much Scotch bonnet chili pepper 2 as you can stand. The meat is still cooked over smoldering embers, and, in Jamaica, those embers are still made as often as possible from pimiento wood.

In fact, purists insist that you can’t call something “jerk” if it isn’t smoked over the wood of the allspice tree—the unique smoke flavor is one of the important ingredients in the dish. And in that regard, we certainly can’t claim that what we present here is authentic jerk. You can, of course, buy pimiento wood on the internet to be shipped to you for your jerk. If you have the means, you might want to give it a try sometime.

Jerk Seasoning

Jerk seasoning can be a dry rub or a wet paste. Here, we opt for the wet paste version, and we think you should make it yourself. Homemade jerk paste is well worth the little time it takes to prepare, and the flavor is incredible. It’s fresh, pungent, bold, and can be made just the way you like it.

It’s easy enough to make! Basically, you roughly chop your ingredients and put them in a blender. Make sure there’s enough liquid to let the blender operate, and whiz it up. You’ll need about 2–3 Tbsp of paste per pound of meat, and the recipe we provide here makes about 1.5–2 cups, so it’s plenty for even a lot of meat!

Cooking jerk chicken

As we noted above, “jerk” is both a flavor and a method, and the method amounts, in essence, to BBQ. It’s a slower cook over smoldering coals, after all! We didn’t buy any pimiento wood, but we still wanted some of that flavor, so we followed the advice of America’s Test Kitchen and made a foil packet containing woodchips, allspice berries, bay leaves, and cinnamon. This approximates the spicy smoke of the pimiento wood. We heated our smoker to 300°F (149°C) using our Billows BBQ control fan and our Smoke X2™ then put our well-marinated chicken on to cook. We used the other channel on our Smoke X2 to monitor the chicken temperature, pulling it after we’d reached 190°F (88°C). (Why 190°F? Read about chicken internal temperatures to learn why that wasn’t overcooked.)

Using Billows allowed us to focus on other things while the chicken cooked, and Smoke X2 allowed us to monitor two channels from a distance, even far inside our building, without having to bother with any setup. We used the time to cook up some rice and peas as well as fried plantains to have with our chicken feast. As soon as the alarm on our receiver sounded, we verified the temperature with our Thermapen^® ONE, took the chicken off the smoker, and were delighted to get to eat such delicious food without having to fly to Jamaica—or even Queens.

---

Make this dish! The flavor is unbelievable, and it’s incredibly fun to make. The smells while you assemble the marinade and when you put the spice packet on the coals are outrageously good, and the resulting chicken is smoky, savory, tender, and juicy. And our temperature tools and advice will help you know that this jewel of the culinary world is cooked perfectly every time. Happy cooking!

Print

---

Shop now for products used in this post: