Even as controversy rages in the UK over celebrity chef Jaime Oliver’s Punchy Jerk Rice with accusations of ‘cultural appropriation’ , Jamaican ingenuity and inventiveness have once again come to the fore with the unveiling of a completely new product by the Jamaica Broilers Group – Pickled Chicken Neck.
Kiss Mi Neck is the label given by Best Dressed Chicken to its new line which has begun appearing on supermarket shelves in tray packs.
A spokesman for the Jamaica Broilers Group touts the pickled chicken neck as being not only tasty, quick and convenient but also healthy and less expensive than the perennial favourite – pig’s tail – used by Jamaicans in dishes like Stew Peas, Rice and Peas and Red Peas Soup. Consumers will soon judge for themselves but the producers boast that when done the ‘right way’ the difference in taste between the neck and the tail is negligible. One big advantage that the pickled chicken neck will have over pig’s tail is that it is a ‘godsend’ for those who don’t eat pork, especially on religious grounds. Added to that is the fact that chicken IS the #1 meat kind consumed by Jamaicans.
Kiss Mi Neck is also likely to find favour as a main meat ingredient in meals as a substitute for, or in preference to imported turkey neck, euphemistically referred to by the Jamaican underclass as the ‘poor man’s oxtail’. Moreover, the fact that it is pickled means that it can be ‘stretched’ , meaning that the flavour can be spread over a larger pot or individual serving of food even where the actual meat serving is scanty!
This inventiveness and ingenuity of Jamaicans which is bound up in their history of enslavement and exploitation, largely explains the incensed reaction of Jamaicans in the UK to a white celebrity chef apparently appropriating in an exploitative way Jamaican jerk cooking. Pickled chicken (Kiss Mi )neck, like jerk pork, is part of a long tradition dating back to the period of enslavement which gave rise to food tastes and preservation and preparation methods that were created out of necessity and as a means of survival. The practice of salting and pickling meat was necessary where there was no refrigeration and the flavouring that was added helped to ‘stretch’ one-pot meals.
The origin and practice of ‘jerking’ in particular, can be traced back to the Maroons – enslaved runaways – who preserved the meat of the wild pig by utilizing the herbs and spices from the forests around them and developing a unique flavour using hot peppers and the all-spice (pimento) leaves. Today, the term jerk is widely applied to a type of seasoning for meats (if not the actual method of cooking) which has found its way into the international marketplace and on menus worldwide. While the people at Best Dressed Chicken are not thinking that far ahead at this stage, they certainly have high hopes for Kiss Mi Neck among Jamaicans at home and in the worldwide Jamaican Diaspora.
Having been fed a constant diet of salted food mainly in the form of codfish, our forefathers not only mastered the art of also salting (pork and beef) but bequeathed to succeeding generations including our own, the taste for ‘corned’ meat in many of our soups and other favourite dishes like Ackee and Salt Fish and Corned Pork and roast breadfruit or boiled ‘food’.
It is therefore a wonder that pickled chicken neck in the form of Best Dressed’s Kiss Mi Neck has taken so long to be introduced into the Jamaican cuisine. If they are to be believed, the idea has been around in the company for a very long time but for which the time has only now just come.
