Man Fire Food Episodes
Season 6, Episode 1
Old School, New School
Roger Mooking gets schooled by two pit masters changing the barbecue game in Charleston, S.C. Carolina-style barbecue is all about pork and Rodney Scott is the whole hog boss. Roger checks out Rodney's impressive new pit room where whole hogs get cooked low and slow. Rodney then hits the hogs with his secret "
Season 6, Episode 2
Swine Dining
Roger Mooking heads to the Liberty Kitchen in Houston, Texas, where Chef Lance Fegen has built a monster wood-fired Argentinian grill. Roger and Lance prepare a traditional Balinese pig roast by spit-roasting it over bold mesquite coals and coconut shells. They complete their tropical feast with Mexican pork asado tacos made on an edible rig. Next Roger heads to Hickory Nut Gap Farm in Fairview, N.C., where Executive Chef Nate Sloan hooks Roger up with a fire-roasted farm feast. They prepare porchetta, stuffing the center cut of a pig with spicy Italian sausage and lush kale pesto, roll it up into cylinder, and spin it on a rotisserie over a bed of hot coals. They also roast spring onions and place them over heirloom grits cooked in a coal-fueled cauldron.
Season 6, Episode 3
Generations of Smoke
Barbecue is in the blood at two family-run institutions where the dedication for perfecting smoked meats spans decades. Burns Original BBQ in Houston, Texas, is the definition of a family business. Grandpa Roy Burns started cooking barbecue in 1973 on the side to help support his NINE children. Four decades later, over a dozen family members continue to keep the flames burning and the meat smoking. Roger is welcomed into the family and the pit room with open arms. He learns the ropes of East Texas style 'cue - tender chopped brisket, pork ribs that fall off the bone, and football-sized loaded bbq baked potatoes. Next, Roger heads to Poche's Market and Restaurant, which has been a one-stop shop for smoked meats in Breaux Bridge L.A. since 1962. Owner Floyd Poche gives Roger a sampling of their legendary 'cue. Pork ribs, pork steaks, sausages and whole chickens get rubbed down with spicy cajun seasoning before getting loaded into their 40 year old wood-fired smoker.
Season 6, Episode 4
Out of This World BBQ
Roger meets a pit master with a PhD who cooks Carolina-style whole hog barbecue in Louisiana. Dr. Howard Conyers is an engineer for NASA by day, but a pit master at night, on weekends, and every moment in between. His family has been cooking whole hogs for generations and he is preserving a time-honored tradition, taking the pig out of the rig and right into the ground. Roger and Howard break out the heavy machinery and flex their muscles to dig out a pit, and build a raging fire in a towering burn barrel.
Season 6, Episode 5
Fueling the Fires In Texas
Roger Mooking's quest for lip-smacking smoked meat leads him back to the Lone Star State. In Houston, Texas, Grant Pinkerton is an award-winning pit master who recently opened up his first restaurant. His specialty is Central Texas barbecue, but he likes to think outside the firebox and cooks up one-of-kind cuts.. Roger and Grant season two whole goats with a spice blend that includes guajillo chile, cumin and red pepper. The tender meat gets hand-pulled and piled on tortillas and topped with all the fixings, and served with a side of Mexican street corn. Then Roger meets up with Chef Andrew Wiseheart of Austin, Texas. When Andrew isn't in his kitchen at Contigo Restaurant, he is playing with fire in the great outdoors with a one-of-a-kind rig. Roger and Andrew rub whole chickens with fruity green peppercorns and hang them to slowly spin over coals. To complete the meal, they stuff whole squash with a medley of hearty vegetables and farro to cook hot and fast by the flames.
Season 6, Episode 6
Where There's Smoke
Roger Mooking follows the smoke signals to two Texas restaurants. At Bin Tapas Bar in San Antonio, Texas, Roger and Chef Jason Dady cook a giant pan of paella flavored with Thai ingredients and cooked over a wood burning fire. In keeping with the Asian theme, Roger and Jason grill up chicken and eggplant marinated in lemongrass, ginger, Thai chilis and fresh herbs. Then Roger heads to Banger's Sausage House and Beer Garden in Austin, Texas which has about 30 sausages on the menu and over 100 beers on tap. Locals crowd the beer garden when the restaurant does their monster feast - Smoke Out Saturday. Chef Ted Prater shows Roger how he roasts a Texas-sized goat in a Cajun microwave and makes vegetable skewers and antelope merguez sausages to complete the Mediterranean menu.
Season 6, Episode 7
Monster Meat
Roger Mooking heads to Hoodoo Brown Barbeque in Ridgefield, CT, where owner Cody Sperry serves up monster-sized meaty masterpieces. Cody serves up "outlaw barbeque," a mashup of styles and traditions with smoke pork butts, pork ribs, pork belly and beef brisket. All that pork comes together in the Hogzilla, a towering sandwich with BBQ ranch dressing, fried green tomato and coleslaw. To wash it down, Roger and Hoodoo Brown Barbecue manager, Chris Sexton make a cocktail called, "The Bloody Trinity," which is topped with smoked meat! Finally, Roger makes his way to Nashville, where Vivek Surti, founder of the VEA Supper Club, cooks up a massive hanging whole rib roast crusted with spices and serves it with grilled broccoli salad and roasted sweet potatoes.
Season 6, Episode 8
Meaty Marvels
In his search for impressive fiery feasts, Roger Mooking finds two meaty marvels. In Palatine, IL, heavy metal couple Greg and Kristina Gaardbo run Rockin Rodizio, a catering company that specializes in Brazilian-style Barbecue that cooks hot and fast. They have three massive rotisseries that are loaded with snappy sausages, succulent pastrami pork ribs, tomahawk steaks, and even cinnamon rolls topped with whiskey icing. Next Roger heads to Brooklyn, where Pit Master Tyson Ho brings traditional North Carolina-style whole hog barbecue to the Big Apple. Tyson and Roger roast up a whole hog and serve it with two scrumptious waffles, one made with sweet potatoes and made entirely out of mac and cheese!
Season 6, Episode 9
Meat In Music City
Roger Mooking heads to the country music capital Nashville, where chefs are playing meaty tunes. At Urban Grub, Chef Edgar Pendley fans the flames in a massive 18-foot-tall hearth and hangs a wall of house-made andouille sausages and pork ribs rubbed with sorghum and spices. Those sausages head into a kettle brimming with a flavorful boil with crawfish, fire-roasted potatoes, and corn. Whole hog barbecue is the main attraction at Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint. Pit Master Pat Martin shares a passion project with Roger, a six-foot-tall rig that can smoke a flock of spice-rubbed chickens suspended in air. To complete this chorus of fiery flavors, there's a side of meaty baked beans and slow-roasted cabbage wedges.
Season 6, Episode 10
Revolutionary Roasts
Roger Mooking meets up with two mastermind chefs who show off their radical rigs on opposite ends of the country. In Great Barrington, Mass. Roger puts the pedal to the metal on Jeremy Stanton's "Rotisserie Bike," a genius stationary bike that can turn up to 12 spits at once with nothing more than the force of two hamstrings. After prepping a whole hog, an 80 pound beef leg, and a basket of onions, Roger and Jeremy burn some calories while they take turns to keep the meat turning over three open fires. Then, Roger races off to San Francisco where he and Chef Sophina Uong of Mestiza Taqueria cook up a Filipino-Mexican feast on her lean mean chicken machine. Over 30 chickens are loaded onto bamboo sticks and leaned over an open fire.
Season 6, Episode 11
Heavy Metal Meat
Roger Mooking gets blown away by not one but two of the biggest metal-clad rigs he's ever seen. In Algoma, Wis., he meets brothers Brad and Aric Schmiling who use a giant cinder block pit and massive metal grates to roast a whole steer. Then Roger heads to Atascadero, Calif. where he meets Jason Elvis Heard, a brilliant engineering consultant who built a record-breaking rig called Mega Pit. Roger and Jason load, it up with 600 pounds of dry-rubbed chicken, beef and pork ribs, and the region's signature meat. If that wasn't enough, Jason shares his take on mac-n-cheese, made with tender chunks of tri-tip and all the BBQ flavors we know and love.
Season 6, Episode 12
Crazy Contraptions
Roger Mooking is going from the west coast to the east coast to check out crazy custom contraptions. First, he gets to play with a one-of-a-kind "meat swing set" in West Sacramento, Calif. Custom-built for Chef Beau Fairbairn, it can cook a whole animal or two, and still have room left over. Roger and Beau slow-cook a whole hog and an entire garden's worth of vegetables over a 12-foot-long wood fire. Then, Roger heads to school in farm country, New Jersey, where cooking-school founder, Ian Knauer, teaches open-fire cooking. Today's lessons: whole lamb roasted over a wood fire on a 5-foot hand-powered rotisserie, accompanied by salsa verde made with herbs from the farm and vegetables roasted in a wood-fired oven.
Season 6, Episode 13
Heating It Up In Hawaii
Chef Roger Mooking highlights the inventive ways Americans cook with fire. From small campfires to custom-made grills and smokers, he visits the home cooks, pitmasters and chefs who are fascinated by fire and food.
Season 6, Episode 14
Fire Festivals
Join the party as Roger Mooking visits three of the greatest fire-roasted ragers that cook mountains of meat and keep the barbecue faithful lining up for more. First, it's all hands on deck in Owensboro, Ky., for a church picnic with nearly four tons of meat and a crowd of 4,000 carnivores. Then, he heads to a Wisconsin winery where they've built a contraption to roast an entire 1,200-pound steer for their annual celebration of beer, wine and beef. Finally, Roger makes waves in New England at a 70-year-old fish festival, sculpting a scorching 12-foot ring of fire for over 300 pounds of shad on upright boards.
Season 6, Episode 15
Top 5 BBQ Chicken
Roger Mooking has plucked his way through plenty of barbecue chicken, but only the very best birds make this list of his top 5 favorites. One chef shows Roger how to hang up and hand-spin chickens with a device that looks like it belongs in a theme park, and another redefines rotisserie on an elaborate rig loaded with complex cogs, gears and even bicycle chains. A Carolina legend makes Roger's list by dipping barbecued birds in an out-of-this-world white sauce. And a master of Puerto Rican pollo rubs his island adobo mix on crispy chicken that has Roger squawking for more, but it's his Jamaican jerk chicken loaded with Caribbean heat that reaches true poultry perfection.
Season 6, Episode 16
Whole Animals
Roger's learning to rig up and roast whole animals with some truly wild techniques. First he'll learn an ancient Argentine method of roasting lamb upright over coals by hanging them on cast iron crosses in the open air. Then he catches a six-foot sturgeon and stuffs it to the gills with fresh veggies for an outdoor feast. Back on land, a South Carolina pitmaster shows Roger his new high-tech rigs, capable of cooking a room full of hogs, ultra low and slow with a thirteen hour cook time.
Season 6, Episode 17
Fishing for Fire
In a pit, under a kettle, or in between hunks of heavy metal, Roger's showing off three flame-licking good feasts that are packing high heat. In North Bend, Oregon, cooking with fire isn't a trend, it's a time-honored tradition. Chief Don Ivy of the Coquille Indian Tribe has been hosting impressive salmon bakes for 25 years inspired by the customs of his ancestors. He shows Roger how to roast 200 pounds of salmon on sticks, and they build one of the biggest fires in Man Fire Food history. Then, Roger makes his way to Old Post Office Restaurant in Door County, Wisconsin, where they cook local fish in a cauldron and lights it up with an explosive wildfire. And, in Napa Valley, father-daughter team built a towering outdoor oven in the middle of their family vineyard. Roger helps them bake whole fish in a California King-size salt bed between not one, but two raging fires.
Season 6, Episode 18
Women Fire Food
Roger Mooking salutes the country's most impressive and creative female pitmasters, learning a few new roasting methods along the way. A San Francisco chef shows Roger her rig made from plumbing pipes, which she uses to roast her Salpicao chicken coated with smoky, coconut salsa. Next, a Tennessee queen of the 'cue shows him how she smokes a meat more likely to be found in a lunchbox than in a smokehouse. Then, two ingenious women teach Roger ways to smoke shellfish that he's never seen before -- one using wine barrels to build a smoker on site and the other flexing her muscles using nothing but flames.
Season 6, Episode 19
Meat Mania
It's pure carnivore extravagance as Roger Mooking visits pitmasters cooking meat in massive quantities. First, there's no time for low and slow as Roger heads to San Antonio to fire up an altar of meat in over 600-degree heat. He skewers a deep green chorizo verde and Mexican-style cabrito -- an entire milk-fed goat. Next, a Central California robotics engineer shows Roger his latest invention -- a 40-foot trailer with room for 600 pounds of meaty magnificence -- and Roger is introduced to California mac and cheese loaded with smoky tri-tip steak. Then he's off to the Santa Maria California Elks Club to load dozens of heavy-duty rods with 60 pounds of sizzling top sirloin in their legendary barbecue room. Finally, Roger checks out a Louisiana smokehouse with 60 years of history and possibly the Bayou's best sausage. He helps smoke entire shacks loaded with beef sausage, Andouille, whole chickens, turkey necks and Tasso ham to make a truly authentic Louisiana po' boy.
Season 6, Episode 20
Pig Out
Roger Mooking is going hog wild for the most insane pig roasts in the country. First, he's in Hawaii to roast a whole pig in a traditional underground oven called an imu. The community comes together to cook the pig with glowing hot lava rock and a layer of local vegetation to trap the heat. Next, he meets the sausage king of Texas at the Meyer's Elgin Sausage smokehouse and learns how they stuff and fire up 5,000 pounds of pork sausage in a single day with state-of-the-art technology. Roger heads to Leatha's in southern Mississippi to learn the secret behind their unusual upright smoker that allows pork fat from their ribs to drip right on top of succulent smoked pork shoulder, and finally he visits a true porky hall of fame at Stamey's in Greensboro, N.C. Their incredible cooking chamber houses 10 huge smoking pits that allow them to roast 200 pork shoulders at a time.
Season 6, Episode 21
Surf and Turf
Roger Mooking is scouring the country for fiery fresh takes on the beloved classic combination, surf and turf. A Miami chef shows Roger a unique rig he built himself that allows him to roast, grill and saute over hot coals. Roger helps him grill juicy pork packed with adobo-inspired flavors and prepare a seafood-studded paella in a party-sized pan. Next, the classic New England clambake takes a cross-country trip to Southern California where Roger helps steam a bounty of seafood, spicy chorizo and some of the Golden State's best produce in a wine barrel. Finally, at Llano Seco Ranch in Chico, Calif., Roger pigs out on juicy Italian porchetta spit-roasted on a handcrafted rotisserie and succulent oysters basted in the pork drippings.
Season 6, Episode 22
Smokin' Sides and Sweets
No cookout is complete without some outrageous side dishes and craveworthy desserts, so Roger Mooking is putting the main course aside to honor everything that tops off the best barbecue meals. He scrambles up a poblano pepper hash at a Houston hangout, and he checks out a new take on mac and cheese in New York, pressing an entire dish into a mouthwatering Belgian waffle. For dessert, there's an apple hand pie that fits right in Roger's pocket and a peach crisp cooked in a coal-fired Dutch oven on the ground. Finally, a French side dish steals the show as Roger cooks up a fresh veggie summer ratatouille prepared on an outrageous outdoor grill.
Season 6, Episode 23
Top 5 BBQ Between Bread
Roger Mooking is letting barbecue pork sandwiches hog the spotlight. He bites off as much as he can chew at Hoodoo Brown Barbeque in Ridgefield, Conn., where they serve a meaty masterpiece loaded with pork belly, pulled pork and shaved pork ribs. Then Roger heads to Bigmista's Barbecue and Sammich Shop in Long Beach, Calif., for succulent barbecue pork stuffed inside sweetened soft buns. At Pecan Lodge in Dallas, Roger gets a taste of The Pitmaster with brisket, pulled pork and chorizo sausages, and he finds Tex-Mex flavor in a pork burrito with fire-roasted green chile sauce at Lewis Barbecue in Charleston, S.C. Finally, Roger visits Top Hat Barbecue in Blount Springs, Ala., where they've been selling smoky pulled pork shoulder sandwiches with tangy barbecue sauce for 50 years.
Season 6, Episode 24
Insane Inventions
Roger Mooking says goodbye to the standard grill and celebrates the most elaborate, over-the-top smokers and roasters. First, he heads just outside Death Valley to cook on a true fire-breathing barbecue pit -- an 8-foot, 800-pound metal dragon with three separate chambers. Then he lands in Kansas City, Mo., for a test flight in Swine Flew, an airplane converted by two mechanics into a fully functioning barbecue grill. They put airline food to shame with pork butts and spare ribs cooked right inside the aircraft cabin. Next, Roger visits a Frankenstein smoker in Oahu, Hawaii, that's constructed from an Air Force cargo container, computer fans and pieces of a commercial jumbo jet. Finally, he checks out a converted tool shed used for a Cajun-style whole hog roast.
Season 6, Episode 25
Pit Bosses
It takes incredible talent and a whole lot of practice to achieve barbecue perfection, and Roger Mooking is honoring the legendary pitmasters who make some of the country's best barbecue. He gets cooking with the man who brought barbecue to Brooklyn at Hometown Bar-B-Que, cooking Jamaican jerk baby back ribs and sticky Korean ribs with a sweet and savory Asian influence. Then, Roger is off to Texas to the famous Kreuz Market to get schooled on traditions dating back to their opening in 1900. Then he heads to North Carolina's Skylight Inn, also known as Jones BBQ, to check out their traditional method of low and slow whole hog cooking with a whopping 16-hour cook time.
Season 6, Episode 26
Smoked Out
Where there's fire, there's smoke, and some of the most flavorful meat on the market comes straight from incredible smoking operations. Roger Mooking joins the team at Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams, a famous smokehouse shipping nationwide from Madisonville, Tenn., to help prepare huge hams for a three-day cold smoke before they're cured for up to two years. Then, he surfs on to Chicago's Calumet Fisheries, an 80-year-old seafood smokehouse, to load up salmon, trout, whitefish, sable and sturgeon. Finally, Roger heads to small town Mamou, La., to a big time smokehouse called T-Boyz. Roger and T-Boy go hog wild on over 500 pounds of Cajun smoked meats that are mixed in with an unbeatable combination of red beans and rice.
