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Roger Mooking uncovers the most innovative ways to cook with fire, from small pits to giant custom-made grills.
Charleston, South Carolina is one of America's top dining destinations, but for traditional whole hog barbecue and low-country oyster roasts, Roger leaves the city and heads into the country. Hemingway is a small town located about eighty miles from Charleston, and is home to Scott's Bar-B-Q. Roger meets pit master Rodney Scott who has been cooking whole hog since he was eleven years old. The smoke-filled pit room can cook up to fourteen hogs. Rodney's mom Ella is in charge of pulling the pork and seasoning it with their secret sauce. Then in fishing town McClellanville, Roger meets Oliver Thames who invented a unique oyster roaster. Local cluster oysters are piled over a metal sheet positioned over a firebox. Blankets of wet burlap rest on top of the oysters which help them steam open.
Hawaii island Oahu is known as the "gathering place," and Roger is invited to two community gatherings abundant with local foods. On the east side of the island, local chef Mark "Gooch" Noguchi teaches Roger how to prepare a traditional Hawaiian imu. Whole pig, local starches and lau lau (packages of cubed pork and salmon) are steamed in a large underground pit lined with hot lava rocks, topped with layers of burlap and tarp, and sealed with dirt. At the farmer's market located at Kapiolani Community College, Roger meets Scott Shibuya who smokes pork, chicken, and turkey tails with guava and kiawe woods, in a unique smoker he cleverly built out of an Air Force cargo container, an airplane food cart, and a computer fan.
Roger's first visit to the 50th state promises big fires and big feasts. Right off of Nimitz Highway in Honolulu is family-run restaurant Koala Moa, famous for whole chickens roasted over fire. The parking lot is filled with rotisserie trailers. Roger and owner Chris Shimabukuro burn wood pallets and unopened bags of charcoal in a thirty-five foot rotisserie trailer. One hundred and forty seasoned chickens are secured in metal baskets that slowly spin and move across the trailer filled with hot coals for approximately thirty minutes. At Ma'O Organic Farms in Wai-anae, Roger meets local chef Bob McGee who roasts half a cow over a custom-built six-by-six foot metal grill. Various cuts of beef, hamburgers, and sausages are cooked on adjustable grates over metal drawers filled with local kiawe wood.
Roger heads to Northern California for two spectacular wood-fired Mediterranean seafood feasts. In Napa Valley, the Seltzner family is famous for their wines and their towering outdoor oven called the Infiernillo. Hot coals are placed on the top and bottom of the Infiernillo and the food is cooked in between. Roger helps encase whole fish, potatoes and onions in salt before they're baked in the enormous oven. In Tomales Bay, caterer Tom Meckfessel prepares a delicious surf-and-turf Spanish-inspired paella over a wood fire right on the water. Roger harvests local clams with John Finger, owner of Hog Island Oyster Farm, which is one of the key ingredients for the mouthwatering paella.
Roger meets two chefs celebrating Argentina's Asado and Brazil's Churrasco in northern California. At Farmstead Restaurant in St. Helena, Chef Stephen Barber built a "live fire" cook area, complete with an eighty-five gallon cauldron, planchas, and metal crosses for Argentinian Asado. Roger and Stephen slow cook spring lamb seasoned with Mediterranean flavors. In Healdsburg, Roger and Mateo Granados, chef of Mateo's Cocina Latina, build an outdoor oven out of bricks and cinder blocks. A large pile of local Manzanita wood is piled in the oven, drizzled with pork fat which serves as natural lighter fluid, and then lit to create coals. Marinated whole ducks, pork loins and leg of lamb are placed onto large Brazilian skewers and cooked on top of the outdoor oven.
Roger heads to the Texas and Louisiana to feast on classic Cajun cooking. In small town Mamou, Louisiana there's a big time smokehouse filled with five hundred pounds of Southern smoked favorites. Roger helps owner T-Boy fill the dark, cavernous room with sausages, tasso, ribs and jerky, and then they fire up the smoker. A selection of smoked meats is then stirred into a pot of T-Boy's famous red beans and served over white rice. In College Station, Texas, a professor originally from Louisiana has transformed a shed into a smoker in order to make Cochon de Lait, a Cajun pig roast.
