How Brooklyn’s Best Jerk Chicken is Made

[upbeat music plays]

Niki from Irie Jerk, we're in Spanish Town

about to make you guys the best jerk chicken you ever eat.

Our style, Jamaican style.

[bell rings]

When you come to Irie Jerk, you're their own family.

But like when you come and be your own authentic self

like we are, you don't need to be nobody special

for my Irie Jerk.

Perfect jerk chicken to me, you have to do it with love.

It is not just about spice and pepper.

You gotta make sure your chicken is marinated.

The smoke gives it the charcoal taste.

You know the charcoal flavor. And don't rush it.

Take your time.

Irie cool. Everything is good.

Keep it calm. It's a Jamaica thing, we say irie man.

[upbeat music]

I know you guys want to see the fire and the smoke. Me too.

But before we get out there,

we gotta season up this chicken.

Who is that behind me? Right here?

Yeah. That's my wife.

That's my life. That's my wife, Kahyii.

My better half without her, irie jerk ain't possible.

These are the small chicken leg quarters.

You have to clean out the guts.

A lot of people don't do that.

You can't eat chicken and you see liver and kidneys.

When you use vinegar and lime

and that's what we use whether we have vinegar

or lime, one of them has to be used.

This is going inside of you.

So now that we wash the chicken

and it's clean, so now we're gonna add our

powder seasoning to it.

We do dry seasoning and wet seasoning,

just to give the jerk the full flavor of it

because the things

that we use in the dry seasoning is different

from the things that we do in the wet seasoning.

Like the first thing we do, we add with allspice seasoning.

Allspice is vital. This is the pimento, we need this.

We usually use the wood itself as the fire in Jamaica.

But we are in New York,

so we are using the ground allspice right now.

So we're gonna pour a little ground sauce in here.

We wanna add some ginger, you understand?

We also gonna blend some up in the wet jar.

We done with the ginger.

For me, we use look a mixed up blend.

You can call it Sazon mixed with whatever.

This is my local blend.

This is the garlic with the ground garlic.

So you wanna add your garlic

and this is your dry jerk seasoning.

Just a little bit.

It don't have to be too much, 'cause it's spicy.

Jerk is just listen,

I was born hearing the name jerk.

I can't tell you the full definition.

I just go along with what the world does.

So you wanna pour some chicken seasoning on it

so you don't wanna add salt

because you have all these other dry seasoning

that contain salt.

So I know you got all your powder seasoning,

all your dry seasoning on it.

You wanna go ahead now

and start making the wet one.

To start your wet marinade,

you wanna have the real, real, real life taste

of these ingredients in it, coming from the earth.

You need this. We have the raw ginger in there.

You need that in the chicken.

Mixed with the powdered one comes together.

Good combination.

This is our base

for our wet marinade is Juices International Sorrel Drink.

Tastes wonderful.

A lot of people know what it is hibiscus.

Everybody makes it Trinidad, [speaking foreign language],

everybody makes it.

But everybody's tastes different.

It adds a nice tang to it mixed with the other ingredients.

The sorrel just brings out something in the chicken.

So we wanna start the blend up.

[blender whirring]

First thing first, the spring onions.

Yeah, you see this now?

This is what look called the scotchy.

This is a Scotch Bonnet Pepper. Very hot.

I don't take the stem outta my pepper.

And you wanna add some pimento pepper.

Pimento pepper is not hot, it just gives you flavor.

Allspice grounded.

I have allspice whole

and I even have allspice in my grill

'cause we use the pimento wood in Jamaica.

So we gotta improvise here in America, we don't have it.

So everything pimento, we doing it.

Beautiful.

So the garlic, real garlic pegs. Need it.

Shaved [indistinct] to me.

Now you see this? This is where you call the thyme.

Very, very essential in the flavoring of your food.

God made this plant, I don't know what he was thinking of.

We're going all in and nothing is going to waste.

We're gonna cut some onions up now and we gonna put them in

and we need a raw ginger.

So now we're gonna leave some of this marinade.

See that? See that?

Now we're gonna put it all up in our chicken now.

Cover your chicken completely with it.

So the season you sit behind the chicken,

I'll stuff it behind here so.

When you're jerking it on the grill now,

you wanna make sure season the all on your chicken.

So when you bite the chicken, when they eat the chicken,

you're supposed to taste everywhere

I'm gonna put the seasoning.

You're supposed to,

so even if the skin should fall off in the fire,

you have a marinade right here.

And I let this marinade for 24, 48 hours.

If you gotta make it right away,

like throw it on the grill right

after seasoning it, choosing what I just told you to use,

it'll still be good.

We're gonna drop this on the grill and get ready to eat.

We're gonna make the sweet honey jerk sauce.

So the wet marinade that we had earlier, some left in here.

All right, so we're gonna add some more

of the juices, International Sorrel

and we're gonna add our honey sauce in there.

Now man to make it sauce

because it tastes good on top

of the chicken when the food is done.

I'm scared of the pepper as much as I'm Jamaican.

So I gotta add some honey in there.

We gotta make it blend a little bit longer.

It's got the spice

and you could just add it on top of your chicken

when you ready man.

[upbeat music]

So guys, we did all the hard work in the kitchen

and it's time to hit the streets.

Made it outside guys.

Chicken is ready to hit the fire.

So we're gonna put them in order,

you know, make it nice and neat.

And we're gonna give it like 15,

20 minutes on each side to make sure

that it's, it's cooked thoroughly.

It doesn't matter if you put the skin up or skin down.

It's whichever way it comes up on the tongue is

gonna cook the same way.

Sometimes you do it and the skin might, you know, fall off.

Nothing's wrong with that.

All right, so in like 20 minutes, like I said,

we keep flipping it and make sure it's cooked thoroughly.

We call these grills the barrel grills.

They're not like the authentic ones in Jamaica

'cause the authentic ones in Jamaica, we don't have

to have a rack on the grill.

The the rack is already made in the grill.

In Jamaica, we use the nutmeg wood or the pimento wood.

In New York I don't have that,

so I have to improvise.

So what I do use lump charcoal,

no briquettes, no Match Light.

I add my nutmeg and my pimento seeds in there.

Give me that home flavor.

I feel like I'm in Jamaica right now.

We started very early this morning.

This is like our third batch.

We started since 6:00 AM this morning.

When the line starts,

we gotta make sure we have it on hand

and people still gotta wait but we do it as fast as we can.

Even though you don't see the big fire underneath it.

It's being slow cooked on top.

You know, closing the lids.

We don't want too much fire, too much oxygen going in here

'cause we don't want this chicken to dry out.

This one is the fire.

So I'm gonna close it right now

and have the smoke and the fire.

The smoke, the fire is at the bottom.

The smoke is cooking in the top.

I might have to hose this side down

'cause like I tell you, I feel this side cooking real fast.

You see right now, the chicken just got

to cook a little bit faster just now.

Prepare for this.

Decided the chicken is almost cooked.

30, 45 minutes the most

and you have your jerk chicken.

Once you put it on the grill, the hard work is done.

The fire does it for you.

Every day, I cook about five, 600 pounds.

You know more on weekends.

We're open six days a week.

We're getting ready to start opening seven days now

'cause the demand, I have people throwing rocks upstairs at

windows and I gotta please my people.

You know that's a lot of work. We are hiring.

Chicken is coming along.

You could hear the fire, it's coming along.

We wanna turn them.

We wanna stick it to make sure

that the heat goes through your chicken.

You don't want this side cooking

and that side not cooking.

By sticking it with the fork,

you're letting all the heat gets in the chicken

so the chicken could cook thoroughly all through.

You don't want one half cooking

and the other half not cooking.

You understand what I'm saying?

And you could tell when your

chicken is cooked because this one is not cooked.

It's heavy. It's heavy.

This one is almost there.

It not because it's smaller. I can get a bigger piece.

It's almost there.

It's lighter because the excess water

or all the excess, whatever it is

that's in there, it's gone.

Before even by using the tong you can feel the weight.

There's no weight on it anymore.

So even though we taking it off the the high fire,

it's still being cooked slowly over here.

All right, so you know

that way you get your chicken moist and ready to eat.

All right, so when chef comes chicken up,

that cut it in three pieces, right?

One, two, three.

All the black you see in it is all those

marinade did look at it.

We have a pigeon peas, rice and peas with gungo peas.

We have an escovitch sauce ready right here

and we have a nice festival line up.

Add chicken, as much as you want.

So I'm gonna add a little sauce on my chicken.

Alright, just a little.

You see the Scotch Bonnet, just a little for me.

Just a little.

Guys, we been waiting all day, starving.

[soft upbeat music]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm.

Right now I can taste the pimento, tasting the ginger,

tasting the spring onions,

tasting the Scotch Bonnet, just enough.

My mouth is having a party right now.

See your rice and peas? Everything.

Mm-mm.

[indistinct] Escovitch, not too much.

I'm in Jamaica right now.

Everything is perfect. I'm at home.

In Jamaica, we say use our hands to make fashion.

That means you might not have what everyone else have,

but we are gonna use these two hands and make it beautiful.

And that's what we've done today. It's more than an honor.

It's more than a privilege to be able to share my culture.

[upbeat music]