Jerk is a native Jamaican cooking technique in which a spice mixture is applied on the meat and the meat is grilled post margination. The marinade can be dry or moist, the meat is traditionally cooked in the locally available pimento wood and wild hog was the preferred meat for the initial versions of Jerk.
The name Jerk is derived from the Peruvian word “charqui” which means dry meat, the English word Jerky has also evolved of the same word.
I cooked this dish for a cooking competition, it being an international competition I wanted to cook something that has global appeal but would also amalgamate well with something Indian which I can present as my dish. So I decided to do a fusion version of the dish and I called it the “Jerk Chicken Tikka Masala” which is Jerk chicken served with the Tikka Masala sauce. I have used Spinach Mashed potatoes for my Carb in the dish. The Jerk marinade is mostly true to its roots but I have made subtle changes to it like pouring in some Soy sauce to give it some Teriyaki flavor and so on. The taste of the dish was out of world, I was surprised with the amount of taste the creamy tomato sauce rendered to the Jerk Chicken and how the Mashed potatoes balanced the heat from the marinade. This is a special dish, if you want to cook something new for Thanks Giving, this is it.

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