Jamaican Jerk Chicken & Haitian Pikliz: Spilled Milk #348

This isn’t your cousin’s backyard barbecue. It’s culinary firewalking. Serve my chicken with pikliz, rice and peas, a cold Red Stripe and enough napkins to make guests question their life choices.

Today’s newsletter includes:

• the 10 best places to eat jerk chicken in Jamaica

• all the reasons you should try making jerk chicken at home

• a jerk chicken marinade recipe

• a live fire grilling video detailing the whole process

• a video for making pikliz

By the time you taste it, the revolution has already happened.

Jerk chicken isn’t just a dish. It’s an act of defiance you can eat with your hands. A culinary riot disguised as dinner. If barbecue is America’s backyard religion, jerk is Jamaica’s guerrilla gospel, born from resistance, fueled by spice and perfected over smoke.

Let’s start with the rebels. The Maroons, escaped enslaved Africans, vanished into Jamaica’s Blue Mountains in the 1600s and decided they’d rather eat roots and live free than sugarcoat life in chains. They hunted wild boar and rubbed the meat with allspice (from the native pimento tree), scotch bonnet peppers, herbs and salt, then slow-cooked it in underground pits. The meat stayed juicy, the smoke stayed hidden, and the soldiers stayed lost. It wasn’t just food preparation. It was self-preservation with purpose.

The Caribbean Getaway: Spilled Milk #347

Over time, the method evolved. Boar became chicken, pits turned into oil drums sliced in half, and jerk became Jamaica’s unofficial perfume, wafting down roadsides, on beaches, and in half-lit alleys where music and meat mingle like lovers in heat. The marinade remained unapologetic: hot, herbaceous and spiced like a war cry. True jerk has three essential elements: fire, funk and soul. The rest is seasoning.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll teach you how I make mine. I serve it at my home with my recipe for Haitian pikliz, which is, to my taste, one of the best BBQ chicken condiments there is. Since it is Caribbean week here at Spilled Milk, I consider this a perfect duo.

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You used to be able to easily get pimento (allspice) wood in the United States. But importing it, fresh or aged, is now strictly regulated. For starters, Jamaica restricts export of pimento wood. Only a few government-approved exporters are allowed to ship, and even then, logs must be heat-treated and certified before leaving the country

On top of that, U.S. import rules require permits for all unmanufactured wood imports, plus heat treatment or fumigation to eliminate pests. That’s NOT great for cooking. And even treated wood gets inspected at our ports; any non‑compliant loads, especially with bark or signs of pests, can be seized. That’s why availability of pimento wood has really shrunk lately.

The only website selling real pimento wood in the U.S. sells theirs for $58 a pound. That’s beyond my scope of affordability. I would go through a pound or so, chipped and soaked, just to smoke my chicken using natural hardwood charcoal for the base of the fire. And that’s too expensive for me by a mile.

But I think my technique and recipe is heavenly. So try it and let me know what you think.