Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:23 pm
What is JERK Cooking?
Learn about the origins of "Jerk" cooking in Jamaica
Like most Caribbean islands, Jamaican foods are derivative of many different settlement cultures, including British, Dutch, French, Spanish, East Indian, West African, Portugese, and Chinese.
But, what exactly is "Jerk" cooking?
Jerk refers to a way that a meat, whether its chicken, beef, pork, goat, fish, vegetables or fruit is seasoned and cooked. This style comes from Jamaica. The typical cooking style uses a marinade or paste that includes at least pimento, which is often called allspice, ginger, thyme, and scotch bonnet peppers, also known as habenero. The meat is then marinated and slow smoked over pimento wood, which adds a unique smoky flavor. Pimentia or pimento is a Spanish word for pepper, and early European explorers mistook this for black pepper, so they called it pimento.
Why the word “Jerk”?
According to most food history authorities, like Alan Davidson, jerk is a Spanish word that comes via the Peruvian word charqui, a word for dried strips of meat like what we call Jerky, in much of the world. The word started as a noun and then became a verb as in "Jerking" which meant to poke holes in the meat so the spices could permeate the meat. The meat is turned (jerked) over and over again until it is fully cooked and tender.
Most historians agree Jamaica was settled by the Arawak Indians over 2500 years ago from South America. They used similar techniques to smoke and dry meat in the sun or over a slow fire, that were common in Peru. This was important as the dried beef could be taken on journeys and eaten as is or chopped and reconstituted in boiling water. This ancient technique goes on today and is known as jerky.
In 1492 Columbus claimed Jamaica for Spain and enslaved the Arawak Indians who soon died and were replaced by African slaves.
In the 1700's several slaves escaped and hid in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica who became known as Maroons. They had to keep watch closely to evade the British army from recapture. With food in short supply theylearned to catch wild boars in the forest. Using salt, peppers and spices, they learned to preserve the meat, afterall, they never knew when their next kill would be.
The meat was spiced and wrapped in leaves to keep. Using hot rocks, they fabricated an oven, and placed it all in, covered and cooked, or it was BBQ’d over a lattice of wood.
This evolved with the use of different spices to the cooking style that we know today as Jerk.