Jerk Catering for a Summer Cookout in New Jersey
Jerk chicken is cookout food by design. It is cooked outdoors, over charcoal, in quantity. O Cook Shop in East Orange cooks its jerk that way and does catering, so a summer cookout in New Jersey is a short conversation. Call 973-310-1065.
Why does Jamaican jerk suit a New Jersey summer cookout?
Because nothing has to be adapted. The food is already outdoor food. Jerk grew up around live fire, long cooking and feeding a lot of people at once, which is the exact shape of a backyard in summer.
Most catering fights the venue. Trays of things that wanted to be plated indoors, sitting in the sun looking sad. Jerk chicken never had that problem, because it was never a plated dish.
It also holds. Jerk chicken sitting in its own drippings for an hour is still jerk chicken. Delicate food does not survive a cookout. This does.
It eats well at any temperature too, which matters more than hosts expect. Cold jerk chicken the next morning is a genuinely good thing, and nobody has ever said that about a warm tray of something creamy.
Scale is the other half of the argument. One chicken and twenty chickens are close to the same job on a live fire, which is not true of most cooking. Doubling the order does not double anybody's problems.
The wood matters as much as the fire, and why pimento wood matters to the jerk smoke explains what it adds.
How do you plan a cookout around live fire food?
Work backwards from when people eat, not from when they arrive. Live-fire food finishes when it finishes, and a schedule that pretends otherwise is how hosts end up miserable at their own party.
Set one eating time and let the rest of the day float around it. Put the cold things out early. Bread, salads, provisions, drinks, ice.
Then the hot food lands once, all together, and everybody stops talking for ten minutes. That is the moment you are actually planning.
Guard against the slow drift as well. People arrive later than they say, and every twenty-minute delay pushes the food further past its best point. Pick a time and hold it.
Sort out shade before you sort out seating. People will stand anywhere for twenty minutes and will not sit in direct sun for two hours. A cookout with no shade empties out early no matter how good the food was.
The cooking side is covered in how the jerk chicken gets cooked in East Orange, and the equipment tradition behind it is in how the drum pan grill actually works.
What should you sort out before you call O Cook Shop?
Have all of this in front of you before you dial:
- your date and the rough hour people will actually sit down to eat
- a headcount you believe, which is never the invite list
- how many guests are not eating meat
- a straight answer on serving equipment, since somebody has to supply it
- one dish you definitely want on the table
Then call 973-310-1065 and have the conversation. Catering terms get worked out on the phone, by people, in a few minutes.
Bring the awkward questions with you rather than saving them. Anything you do not ask on the first call becomes a problem on the day, and none of it is awkward to a kitchen that does this regularly.
what a catering conversation covers sets up the rest of it.
What does a Jamaican catering buffet look like set up outdoors?
Foil pans over sterno, a line people walk down, somebody minding the end of it. O Cook Shop has posted its own buffet setups, and that is the shape of the thing.
Outdoors the enemies are wind and heat. Wind pulls the flame sideways off a sterno can. Heat wilts anything with a dressing on it within the hour.
Put the line in shade. Put a wall, a fence or a hedge behind it. Both problems shrink immediately.
Rice holds temperature better than almost anything else on the table. Stews hold well too. Fried items go first for a reason, so put them at the front and accept that they will run out.
Run the line in one direction only, with plates at the start and the meat at the end. People load up on whatever they meet first, so putting the meat last is not stinginess. It is how everyone gets some.
Have somewhere for bones. It sounds trivial and it is the thing hosts forget most often. One bin at the end of the line keeps the table from filling with plates nobody can move.
Sending food away from the kitchen is its own operation, and how off-site pop-ups and events work covers that side of it.
What goes on the table beside the jerk?
Rice and peas is the default and it earns the spot. Then festival, mac and cheese, a sharp slaw with vinegar and heat in it, and one green thing so the table is not entirely beige.
Regulars pair jerk chicken with festival, which is the traditional match and still the correct one.
Do not stack the table with five heavy starches. Two is plenty. The job of everything else is to carry drippings and cool the pepper down.
Think about the sauce situation early. Somebody always wants more heat and somebody always wants less, and a bottle at each end of the table settles an argument that otherwise runs all afternoon.
Leftovers are part of the plan rather than a mistake. Jerk chicken pulled off the bone the next day goes into rice, into a sandwich, into pasta. Order as though you want some left.
Call 973-310-1065 with a headcount and a date. Ask about jerk chicken first. The rest of the table arranges itself around it once that is settled.