Jerk pork and chicken

As tradition built it

Jerk pork and chicken

Chicken about 2 hours 20 minutes over the fire, pork 2 hours in the oven, each plus marinating overnight.

Ingredients

The chicken's jerk paste

• 60g ginger, roughly chopped
• 4 spring onions, roughly chopped
• ½ red onion
• 3 tbsp pimento (allspice) berries
• 2 tsp salt
• 1½ tbsp sugar
• 1 head garlic, peeled
• 20 sprigs thyme, roughly stripped
• 4 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp black pepper
• 1 to 2 Scotch bonnets

The chicken

• 1 chicken, quartered
• 10 thin bay branches or leaves

The pork's jerk marinade

• 1 small onion, quartered
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled
• 4 stalks escallion, roughly chopped
• 6 sprigs thyme, hard stems removed
• 1 to 2 Scotch bonnets, stems removed
• 5cm piece ginger, peeled
• 15 pimento berries
• 1 tsp paprika
• ½ tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 vegetable bouillon cube
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tsp browning
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp olive oil

The pork

• 1.8 to 2.7kg pork shoulder, whole, patted dry

Method

The chicken

1. Blitz all the paste ingredients together.
2. Stab each piece of chicken about three times with a sharp knife. Rub the paste all over and into the slits, and leave it overnight.
3. Set the barbecue for indirect grilling: coals pushed to one side, or split between both sides with a clear channel down the middle.
4. Lay the bay branches away from the coals and the chicken on top of them. Half close both sets of vents, close the lid, and cook 1½ hours, checking now and then.
5. Turn the chicken and cook 20 to 30 minutes more.
6. Take away the bay, open the vents fully, lay the chicken skin side up, and cook another 20 minutes, until it is dark brown.
7. Rest it and serve with rice and peas, jerk gravy and Scotch bonnet sauce.

The pork

8. Pulse the marinade ingredients in a food processor to a purée with some texture left.
9. Rub it over every side of the pork, cover, and leave it overnight, or 12 to 24 hours.
10. Rest the pork 20 minutes at room temperature. Bake it covered at 180°C for 1½ to 2 hours, until tender, adding a little water or stock if it dries.
11. Rest it on a board, cut it into chunks, and spread them on a shallow tray.
12. Put them under a hot grill for about 5 minutes, until caramelised with some charred edges. Serve hot.

Notes

The chicken is Melissa Thompson's, from Motherland; she lays it on bay branches. The pork is Taneisha Morris's, of The Seasoned Skillet, an oven method. Grace Foods grills its chicken direct, turning and basting every 5 minutes for 45 minutes, and offers pimento, cinnamon, guava and pepper elder leaves blended into the marinade. No source gives a quantity of pimento wood.

What a modern chef changes

Kamado smoke, pimento toasted fresh

Rung 01, 04, 05

Method

1. Run the Big Green Egg as a low, indirect kamado smoker with pimento wood chunks in a foil boat around the coals, a documented home-cook workaround that stops the wood combusting too fast and maximises smoke exposure; a genuine substitute when pimento wood itself is unavailable is whole allspice berries added to fruitwood.
2. Toast pimento berries fresh in a dedicated spice grinder just before blending the marinade, following the toast-then-grind principle.
3. Finish the meat with a Scotch bonnet dust, dehydrated and ground fine, dusted on at the table for heat without diluting the marinade's own balance.