YETI Presents | Underground Cooking: Jamaican Jerk

Pimento, thyme, onion, scallion, garlic, ginger, scotchbonnet peppers — when the flavors are fused together and prepared with love, it creates the “One Love flavor” of Jamaica Jerk. But the centuries-old cuisine of Jerk is more than its ingredients. Chef and author Melissa Thompson visits Chef Manzie and host Matthew Robinson in Jamaica to dive deeper into the history of Jerk, walking the path of the Maroons and Taínos, and experiencing an authentic underground cook that makes Jamaican Jerk what it is: the story of survival.

Created by Doc Noe
Directed by Doc Noe
Shot by WRKSHRT
Edited by Trip Dugas
Animation by Kenzie Mines
Photos by Patricia Niven, India Rose, and Samer Moukarzel

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[Music] [Music] One, two, three. I see color. I see feet. I see a hug that’s ready to eat. Yes. Sorry, a dish like jerk is like to me it’s like resistance food, right? Because so many of these dishes were like rooted in extraordinarily difficult circumstances and rather than just eating for sustenance, rather than just eating to stay alive rather than just eating to live like people kind of like they live to eat, right? Because we’re not just going to make food that’s going to keep us alive, but we are going to get joy from this food. Like there is I I imagine very little joy around us, but we’re going to make delicious food. food so delicious that like what 500 years later we’re still eating it and everyone in the world knows about it. To me that’s like like Jamaica’s got the best food in the world. [Music] Every time I come back I just learn more about the island and I guess through that I learn a bit more about myself as well. So I’m Melissa Thompson and I am a food writer, author and chef and I specialize in live fire cooking, barbecue, grilling. So my dad is Jamaican. My mom’s malties and I didn’t get to Jamaica until I was in my 20ies. I think my dad left when he was 9 years old. My Jamaican identity, I guess I felt that the most when I was eating or cooking Jamaican food. Food tells a story. It tells you what the culture is and who you are. When you cooking from ancestors or cooking from elders is a passion. You cook with love and that’s what Jamaican food is. The flavors are fused together and that creates that one love flavor. [Music] Hey man, Melissa Wan. How you doing Matthew? Matthew Robinson is a food boss. So I came across him on social media a couple of years ago and and just what I liked about him is that he showcases food around the island like some of the smaller producers as well. One thing about Jerk, you need the best ingredients and the best way to get the ingredients is from the people. So what we going to get? Heading right up here. We’re going to meet with my friend Chef Manzi who is a Jamaican jerk champion to get some of the spices from a star that he frequents going my brother. Greetings and salutations. Blessings bro. All right. Nice to meet you a lot about you. So have I. I’ve heard a lot about you too. So what goes into your jug? It’s a secret. The basics, the the basics is pimento. You got to have that. That’s the number one spice. You got to have your scotch bonnet peppers. Time. You got to have your garlic. And also, you know that garlic is a tender rice. It is not all about the seasoning. It’s all about the process. Okay? You know what I’m saying? So, you have a whole lot to go in there. So, what the thing that we use with scotch bonnet pepper, yellow or red is for heat, green is for flavor. Okay. So, we’re going with a little more heat with the yellows. Okay. I see this. This is a pimento. Can I get a smell? Absolutely. A proper proper proper. It’s like the clove. It’s the same family of the clove, but pimento packs a a better punch. Jamaican. Jamaican ginger is the smaller one. The foreign ginger is the larger one. One thing Jamaica is known for is the flavor of our ginger. We have one of the most intense gingers in the world. Is that corn over there? Like food in Jamaica is everywhere. Like you you look at a tree and there is stuff growing in it like all the time. Like I spoke to a chef here and he was like you know you can be poor in Jamaica but you’ll never be hungry. Thank you. So Chef Manzi like best jerk chef in Jamaica would you say? He has a trophy to prove it. Okay. Okay. Nice. So the purpose of this trip was to go into the mountains and cook jerk how it would have been cooked originally by the maroons with help from the teno. A lot of people love barbecue. I think it’s from Texas, Kansas City, Carolas. Barbie was developed in the Caribbean by the Tyenos. The Tyenos, they were the original Jamaican inhabitants and the maroons are slaves that ran away from the plantation that ended up fighting enslavements. Most of them went into the hills into caves. Even though the English forces greatly outnumbered the maroons and were far better equipped, it seemed these maroon soldiers were all but invincible. Tyenos cooked barbecue similar to how jerk is done in Jamaica, but it’s reversed because it’s above ground. Once they and the maroons started to run away, it became jerk by burying it underground. The British were trying to recapture them. So, the whole point was to cook underground, not give too much smoke away. And that fusion of them coming together and creating this style of cooking is what became jerk. It was crucial for both of their survivals. Jamaicans and people with Jamaican heritage, like why it means so much to us and why it’s such an important dish. It tastes good, but also the story. [Music] Thanks for having us. Yeah, man. Where does your name come from? Father. Father Chris. Right now, I grow and treat everybody good. So, they call me father. I’m like a father to plenty of them, you know. Okay. Yeah, man. That’s why they call me father Chris. Yeah, man. We grow pineapples, plantins, yam, cocoa, dashine, peppers, papaya. We didn’t necessarily have a list of things. I think the beauty of it was just knowing that we were going to just go and see what was there and like kind of surrender to the seasons a bit. Scotch bunny pepper. The flavor embodies Jamaica. The flavors, the spice. It reminds you of a little regular, a little dance, a little flow of Jamaica. That thing, that swagger that Jamaica has is embedded in scotch bonnet pepper and pimento. When you’re throwing down in Jamaica, you always have that in your kitchen. You want to taste it? Test it, man. I want to taste it. The flavor tast warm. I think there’s hot. Have some spice. Woo. Chuck it. Want to try some? Are you going to eat the whole thing? No. It’s not the hello. It’s the bye-bye. I was so excited to get going for the next day because like we were we were all set and so all we needed to do was not mess the cook up top rock. What I was excited to see about this is just the process of cooking jerk underground and also how it would how it would uh affect the flavor. But what makes I mean like cuz you’re like Jack Champion. So what makes your jerk so good? It’s all about the process and the love that you put into it. It’s something that you know I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always seen it. We’ve always had it. And my process I it takes time. It’s not something where I’m not I’m never ever going to use a jar. You know what I’m saying? So my ingredients are fresh all the time. You know, it’s just the love that you put into it. Now to keep it as traditional as we wanted, we had to wash the hog in the river cuz we were at a place where the maroons and the tyenos were. We have to keep it as authentic as can be. Manzy’s method is a dry rub that helps the uh wet rub stick. So the dry rub was a mixture of like pepper, pimento, paprika, salt, garlic powder, and so then we helped him get the wet marinade together, which is everything that we’d gone shopping for. Wild hogs would roam in the mountains and they would be hunted, trapped, and that is how the marinade came around. It wasn’t jerk chicken, which is what a lot of people know throughout the world. I mean, respect that because a lot of cultures don’t eat pork. Nothing like putting a hog on that fire and putting that seasoning on it and having that fat render down and creating that crust and that crunch and that Jamaican flavor of scotch bonnet pepper, pimento, thyme, onion, skeleion. It also has the smoke going up, but not enough smoke to give away the location. The smoke rises, but it dissipates into the air itself. So, we have it down in there. It’s cooking and we’re going to come back in a few hours and check it. What are your inspirations when you’re coming up with this? So like here like so going to jerk here and I bought this bottle of pepper sauce back with me. The flavor was just out of this world. And um so now whenever I’m making jerk I always make a pepper sauce and I always put I always roast the vegetables cuz in the it brings out more flavor when you roast it as well. And I think especially in the UK cuz like the UK like it’s not like Jamaica. the ingredients we get like the this the tomatoes aren’t going to be as sweet. The peppers aren’t going to be as sweet. And so this just helps like bring out that flavor and makes things a bit a bit tastier. Right, that’s it. Pepper sauce. I hope it reconnected Melissa with her roots and just feel the experience of it because up from there you have the caves, you have the arowax that were right there on there. So it’s a place that has spiritual value to what we’re doing. The maroons escaped and most of them went into the hills into caves and from there they would plan how they would attack and when they would attack. One of the the most special things for me aside from the cook itself was going to see the caves. It just felt very kind of surreal, very like sobering. Really weird cuz it’s almost like you know when you go to I don’t know like a like a really intricate cathedral. Yeah. Like almost like Gothic or something and it’s present. Yeah. really and it’s like like you have meetings and then you have meetings, right? Like meetings that are going to determine like whether you live or die. It determines history. Yeah. These meetings determine the faith of Jamaica. The whole communities, man. Faith of thousands of people, the entire island of Jamaica they enslaved. Yeah. Like I don’t want to overstate it, but it was almost like a a life-defining moment. Like I spent so long researching and writing about the maroons and them choosing places that were like really difficult for people to get to and and it’s one thing to read about it, but to go and see it, to climb that route, walk in their footsteps, to literally walk in their footsteps, right? We’re all looking for connection. We’re all looking for connection. And so that for me was like really magical. Like yeah, what what like what an experience. Oh man. [Music] Go straight up. One, two, three, three. [Music] I mean, the thing about cooking like underground is that you can’t, you know, you can’t probe it for the temperature. So, you have to just trust the process. Once we opened it, it was like unwrapping a Christmas gift. You smelled the pimento. You smell the spices that have got a little char from the belly. You could smell the jerk. Happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One, two, three. And obviously like Manzy, Matthew and I had to have like chef perk by first taste. And then we had a little bit and then we had like another little bit. We kind of couldn’t stop cuz it was like it was just like the sweetest pork and it was like the most like smokiest kind of quite a subtle smoke and it was just it was perfect. It just felt like a triumphant moment. Everybody has this tendency where food can be complex. You can get very complexity with your flavors. It can still be simple and it can still be great. This was done hundreds of years before and these are the flavors that we’re eating today and we’re still experiencing and enjoying today. So on a personal level, so when I when I wrote my book Motherland, I researched so much about about Jerk and and the maroons and the Tyeno and how this kind of collaboration between the two groups resulted in this dish that we know so well. And to go to a place where we know Maroons had walked that path, like for me personally, kind of everything makes sense. Everything that you know about Jerk, everything that you’ve ever read to see it, it makes sense. If you want to talk about jerk, you have to know the history of jerk. You have to know where it’s coming from. If you don’t know your history, you’re like a tree without roots. And what’s a tree without roots? It’s not grounded. It’s not going to grow. It’s not going to expand. So to connect with her and share this experience was something simply unique, simply amazing, and something I really cherish. [Music]