Jamaican · Main
Jerk Pork
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, real fire that builds and stays, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg pork shoulder, cut into slabs 3 cm thick
- 6 scotch bonnets, 60 g, stems removed
- 8 scallions, 120 g
- 4 cloves garlic
- 30 g fresh ginger
- 16 g pimento berries, ground
- 2 tsp thyme leaves
- 1 tsp grated nutmeg
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 30 g dark brown sugar
- 60 ml soy sauce
- 60 ml cane vinegar
- 1 tbsp salt
- 2 good handfuls pimento wood chunks, or pimento berries and bay leaves
Equipment
Grill · Grater / zester
The skills inside
JerkGrilling over live coalsResting meat & slicing against the grainThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blend scotch bonnet, scallion, garlic, ginger, ground pimento, thyme, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, soy, vinegar and salt to a coarse dark green paste thick enough to sit on a spoon, then work it hard into the scored pork.
- Build a small fire, let it burn down to grey coals and bank them to one side. Lay soaked pimento wood over the coals and wait until the smoke stops being white and acrid and turns thin and sweet.
- Set the pork on the grate away from the coals, cover, and hold the pit between 110C and 130C (230F to 265F).
- Turn the meat every half hour, feeding the fire a little wood each time, until a skewer meets no resistance and the surface has gone black and lacquered.
- Chop across the grain with a cleaver so every piece carries both bark and interior, and serve with the pan juices scraped up.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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