Chef Roger Mooking shares where his affinity for fire originated and how it led him to be the host of Man Fire Food. Roger gives his thoughts on why humans are drawn to cooking food over an open flame and the sacred ritual of fire.
Chef Roger Mooking shares where his affinity for fire originated and how it led him to be the host of Man Fire Food. Roger gives his thoughts on why humans are drawn to cooking food over an open flame and the sacred ritual of fire. He talks about growing up in Trinidad with a Chinese heritage and the many cultural influences that shaped his formative culinary experiences. Roger shares why he never cooks the same thing twice and the creative way he fosters culinary curiosity with his four daughters. He talks about the first CD he ever owned and the many influences that impact his own career as a recording artist. Roger talks about his adventures hosting Man Fire Food and the many interpretations of barbecue across the country before talking about the hottest thing he’s ever tasted on his show, Heat Seekers, and how to cool down a spicy bite.
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Find episode transcript here: https://food-network-obsessed.simplecast.com/episodes/roger-mooking-on-never-cooking-the-same-dish-twice
[MUSIC PLAYING] JAYMEE SIRE: Hello. Hello, and welcome to Food Network Obsessed. This is the podcast where we dish on all things Food Network with your favorite Food Network stars. I'm your host, Jaymee Sire. And today we have a chef and man of many talents on the show to chat about bringing the heat with fire and flavor and how his diverse background and experiences blend to form his global culinary style. He's a celebrity chef, restaurateur, and award winning recording artist. You've watched him on shows such as Man Fire Food, Everyday Exotic, and Heat Seekers. It's Roger Mooking.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Roger, welcome to the podcast. As a girl who grew up camping in Montana, I am very excited to talk to the man behind Man Fire Food. So where did this affinity for fire begin?
ROGER MOOKING: I'm a descendant of Sinanthropus man, so that's part of the equation, but when I was a little kid me and my friends used to play this game called matches.
JAYMEE SIRE: Sounds like a dangerous game.
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, it's a dangerous game. So I think that we invented matches, but I'm sure there are many kids around the world who've played similar games. So what it is a bunch of teenage boys stand in a circle--
[LAUGHTER]
JAYMEE SIRE: OK.
ROGER MOOKING: --with a book of matches. And you wait till it's the spring thaw that's still dry before the summer and the green grass comes, and you stand in this circle in a really large open field, I don't recommend this to anyone.
JAYMEE SIRE: OK. [LAUGHS]
ROGER MOOKING: And you drop a match on the ground lit. It catches the grass. And then you wait for the very last opportune moment before the fire takes over the entire field and you try and stomp it out. You try and stop it out before it takes over the field. I was telling that story at the time, was Bruce Seidel. And I was telling that story to Bruce one day and we were laughing. My god, it's so ridiculous. And then a couple of months later, they were sitting on this concept for a Man Fire Food that Irene Wong had created and they're like I know the perfect host.
[LAUGHTER]
JAYMEE SIRE: Oh wow. That is like a success story like I've never heard. I mean, did you ever think that you throwing matches into a dry field of grass would result in a television show?
ROGER MOOKING: No. It may result in that maybe some like prison time or something but no, never a television show. But look at that hey, nine seasons deep.
JAYMEE SIRE: Why do you think it is that us as humans, we are so drawn to fire and open flame in general, but specifically for food preparation?
ROGER MOOKING: Well, I mean, if fire was just a primal thing, right? You start a fire, it's mesmerizing, it's hypnotizing. You just stare at it. It provides you warmth, it will dry out your clothing, it'll help you cook food. From an Indigenous perspective, there's a ritual to fire. Many cultures around the world, there's a ritual to fire and it's sacred, and honored, and respected. And has to be burned in a very specific way and put out and extinguished and guarded in a very specific way.
So there's just so-- astrology is connected to fire. So there's just so many things that connect us to fire, and I think that there's just something that really draws us back to all of those primal elements when we start cooking over fire and be able to nourish ourselves with this sacred thing, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: Mesmerizing is the perfect descriptor. I've mentioned camping in Montana, like, that was one of my favorite things to do. Just sit by the fire and stare into it because it is mesmerizing, and it kind of takes on a life of its own. What are some of your personal favorite things to cook over an open flame?
ROGER MOOKING: I really love really good smoked beef rib. It's just spectacular. So, so good. Really good smoked chicken. I love some smoked cheese and smoking salts as well. Lamb, I'm really bad at doing the one of anything.
[LAUGHTER]
JAYMEE SIRE: No, it's OK. What are the most interesting or unique things you've ever cooked over fire?
ROGER MOOKING: There's been a lot. I mean, we've cooked a whole cow and there was an adventure around that. There was maybe too much drinking happening with our guests--
[LAUGHTER]
--and it carried over through the night. And the cow had a lot of fat on it so it was dripping and rendering fat and flaring up so there was like hoses involved, then alcohol, and buckets, and--
JAYMEE SIRE: [LAUGHS]
ROGER MOOKING: That was a really good adventure, but, you know, it turned out really good. We were injecting it with a wine and all kinds of spices and stuff, while it's cooking. And so it was really, really cool.
JAYMEE SIRE: How many people were involved? I mean, that's a pretty big undertaking to eat a whole cow.
ROGER MOOKING: Well, what they do is they cook this cow for fun, and then they have a-- for a charity event. So it feeds hundreds of people. It's pretty incredible.
JAYMEE SIRE: Very, very cool. Well, we've talked about fire. Let's talk about where that love of food came from. Can you share just some of your earliest food memories?
ROGER MOOKING: Making dumplings, standing at the counter. I was maybe three or four years old in Tobago. I was born in Trinidad so we were in Tobago at the time. Trinidad and Tobago were in Tobago at the time. So I remember wrapping-- I was obsessed with dumplings. And in Trinidad we make these dumplings called cow tongue dumplings. They kind of resemble the shape of a oval of your palm basically and it's like flat and thick and wide. So it's like-- they call them cow tongue so it looks like a cow tongue, right?
So I was obsessed with cows tongue dumplings and when you bite into them they kind of squish because there's like no baking powder in it. So when you bite into it they give the sound like [SQUIRTING SOUND] and it's like it's the most amazing satisfying thing on planet Earth. So that, and we serve that with like curry crabs or curry crab and dumplings is like one of my earliest memories. And learning also how to cut up a chicken to make chicken curry.
JAYMEE SIRE: Were those the first things that you actually learned to cook on your own or was there another dish that was kind of the Genesis of this career?
ROGER MOOKING: I mean, that was stuff that I learned from my parents, but the first thing is I learned to cook on my own omelets. And I like mastered omelets and I used to make this thing called-- I called it goulash basically. It was basically scrambled eggs with whatever leftovers from the fridge that I'd like to-- and I'd mash it all up and so was part omelet, part scrambled eggs thing. And I used to do that, then go play street hockey in the back and pretend I was Grant Fuhr.
JAYMEE SIRE: Do you remember the moment you knew you wanted to become a chef?
ROGER MOOKING: I was three years old and my aunt-- you know you ask little kids hey, what are you going to be when you grow up? So my aunt did that to me and I, without blinking, I said I was going to be a chef. And I remember this moment. And everybody looked-- all my aunts and uncles looked at me like, boy, you got no idea what you're talking about because all that side of the family-- my grandfather came from China ended up in the Caribbean and after a long while open restaurants, bakeries and then all my aunts and uncles on that side of the family to this day still run catering companies and restaurants and stuff, right? So I came up in that. So when I said that to them when I was three, they're like you have no idea what you just said.
[LAUGHTER]
JAYMEE SIRE: Did they try to persuade you into other professions or were they supportive?
ROGER MOOKING: No, the family supported. We're like food obsessed family so they're totally down with it. And also, our parents never pushed us to be anything like-- to be a part of their profession. They're like whatever you want to do, however we want to do it, just make sure you're the best at it. If you want to sweep floors, be the best street sweeper on the planet, you know? So--
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah.
ROGER MOOKING: --that always stuck with me.
JAYMEE SIRE: You have such a diverse background. Your grandfather is Chinese, immigrated to Trinidad where your dad was born, and then you were raised in Canada. So with this mix of Caribbean and Chinese influences, what meals dominated the menu in your household growing up?
ROGER MOOKING: You know, I grew up in a family-- and I thought everybody lived like this-- we would have roti for breakfast or bacon saltfish for breakfast, then we would have Chinese food for lunch, and then we'd have-- I lived in Edmonton at the time-- so then we would have pierogies and [INAUDIBLE] for dinner, you know? And I thought everybody ate like that until I went to my friend's houses in Edmonton and it was like oh snap, what is Cheez Whiz?
JAYMEE SIRE: [LAUGHS]
ROGER MOOKING: Toast?
JAYMEE SIRE: Well, that's a fair question no matter what.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, if you were to draw a Venn diagram of Chinese and Caribbean foods, how would they be alike and what makes them unique from each other?
ROGER MOOKING: I mean, there's a lot that plays together there. For instance like cumin is very popular in Sichuan cuisine and it's very popular in East Indian cuisine, which is subsequently very popular in the Caribbean in some of the spice mixes and the masala and stuff, right? So we get a lot of those kind of spices that are happening just over time through the spice trading routes and through slave trade routes, actually, moving goods throughout the communities. And those things are all very prevalent.
A large Chinese population came to the Caribbean actually around the 1920s. There's a very heavy marriage between Chinese cuisine and Caribbean cuisine so this is where you see stuff like duck curry come into play. You see that happening in certain parts of the Caribbean, right? So those things definitely come together, but they're very different. They're very different in many ways as well. For instance, in the Caribbean we don't use cornstarch for thickening where that's a very prevalent thing to do in Chinese cuisine.
Things like fish sauce and shrimp paste, those aren't part of the cuisine in the Caribbean that are specific to that. And that works vise versa in many different aspects as well. So same, same, but different.
JAYMEE SIRE: Your culinary style has also been shaped by formal training with Japanese, French, and Swiss German chefs, how do these come together to create your globally inspired cooking style?
ROGER MOOKING: Well, you know, I had a [INAUDIBLE] because my family is like so diverse as well. When I've done genealogy on my family, there's like Spanish, obviously African, there's Chinese, Southeast Asia, Dutch, Irish. There's all kinds of stuff, but predominantly it's like African and Chinese. And so when I look at that-- I grew up in the most diverse of the islands in the Caribbean, Trinidad, and Tobago heavy African influence, like I said Chinese influence, Indian influence, Caribbean Indian influence, so it's the most diverse.
And a lot of influence coming from Venezuela and South America as well because you can actually see it on a clear day, right? But it's a very diverse community in the Caribbean, which is unique in that part of the Caribbean. Then my family moved to Edmonton, Alberta where there was probably not another black family for 500 miles. Then I was surrounded by a lot of Ukrainian and Polish cuisine and learning all that kind of stuff and North American cuisines.
I never had beef stew in my life so those kind of things and then going into formal training or learning all these different chefs, all of those things I would say contributed to my trajectory as much as the formal training and the culinary training in real time. And all those things piecing together, really give me this perspective of the world in really opening and embracing the world because I thought it was just regular that people have dim sum for breakfast and curry goat for dinner, right? So--
JAYMEE SIRE: [LAUGHS]
ROGER MOOKING: I just kind of lived that way and that's all I know. And then when I went into the culinary world, it's like well, why do I have to limit what I know and what I have access to and what I authentically live in to try and appease x for instance, right? And so I just stayed true on that road and just trying to and embrace all communities and learn from as many people as possible from all walks of life. And that's fared me well in terms of learning and continuing to learn and develop my professional trajectory, but also just feeding my personal curiosity which seems to be insatiable.
JAYMEE SIRE: Is there a specific dish that kind of sums up your point of view that you just described? That it comes from all of these different backgrounds and influences?
ROGER MOOKING: I don't know if there's a specific dish because I don't ever cook the same thing twice when I'm at home. If you come to my restaurant it'll be exactly the same thing every single time.
JAYMEE SIRE: Sure.
ROGER MOOKING: I've been cooking for myself for a lot of years and for my family and we don't eat the same exact thing twice so--
JAYMEE SIRE: Really?
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, I can't say that there's a specific dish like that speaks to that because it's just always experimenting, always trying different things. I'm still making basically goulash from back in the day in different ways.
JAYMEE SIRE: That's so interesting. So you don't have a go to dish that you're like I'm tired I'm just going to whip this up, but you just kind of switch it up every single time?
ROGER MOOKING: No, I look at what's available, what's looking fresh. Sometimes maybe it's leftovers that's driving the decision, or sometimes you bought a really good piece of fish and I bought it yesterday and I got to cook it today kind of thing, right? And that's always the jumping off point is what looks good? What do I feel like? What is the family feel like? Did we eat 600 pizzas last night? Well, maybe today we eat a salad. We got to balance it out. So I'm always just going by the moment and adapting.
JAYMEE SIRE: Are there any destinations out there you have yet to visit that you would like to in order to kind of add to that global flavor palette?
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, yeah. We were supposed to go to Portugal and then pandemic hit. So I would really, really love to dive into some Portuguese cuisine and see-- one of my assistants is Portuguese and so I would just learn so much from her and she would just feed me stuff-- actually her husband, they would feed me so much stuff and I'd be like man, this Portuguese food's so good. And how they mix meat and seafood in really interesting ways. So good and fresh. And so Portugal is one place on the list for sure.
JAYMEE SIRE: Is that a family trip or would that be something just strictly for food exploration?
ROGER MOOKING: Well, what we would do pre-pandemic is me and my wife, once a year, would go on a big trip. So we've been to like Japan, we've been to France, we've been to Barcelona, Spain. We've been to Cambodia, Thailand. So we do one trip a year and then the pandemic hit so we stopped. So we're hoping to pick up that trajectory again, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah, absolutely. I'm right with you on that. You are a father of four though, how do you foster curiosity about food in their lives?
ROGER MOOKING: Well, we do a couple of different things. One is every single week when grocery shop, we buy one thing that has never come into the house ever before, right? So it could be a packaged good, it could be a fruit, piece of produce, a meat cut. Something. Something that we've never ever brought into the house before that enters the house and we try it out. And we experiment with it, we learn about it. If I know about it, then I'll cook with it. If I don't know about it, my wife will cook about it.
If we both don't know about it, then we just read up on it, learn and see what people do and then we just try and figure it out. And so the kids see that experimentation and they're curious too. It's like oh, what's coming this week? So when we come in the house with the groceries, they run to the door because it's like Christmas for them every single week. It's like oh, what's in that? What's in the bag? What's this and they're picking out the bags like oh. So we're fostering their curiosity that way. And like I said, I never cook the same thing twice so their palates are constantly getting new information, right?
JAYMEE SIRE: What's a recent thing that you came home with that was maybe difficult or hard to cook or hard to convince them to try?
ROGER MOOKING: We've recently bought a sweetie grapefruit. It's a citrus fruit that's like-- it looks like a big grapefruit. The flavor is a little bit more floral as well as being citrusy. So we brought that home. That was something-- like I said, sometimes it's just that simple. Just cut it and eat it and experience it that way and that's what we did.
JAYMEE SIRE: Do you have any advice for parents who maybe are struggling with a picky eater?
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, for sure. What we've discovered is that a kid might say, I don't like coconut and we're like OK, try coconut water. No, I don't like coconut water. OK, try coconut jelly. Oh, I kind of like the coconut jelly. Ooh, try coconut flakes crusted on this shrimp or whatever, you know? Ooh, I like that. Or coconut inside of a bread. In Trinidad we make this holiday bread called sweet bread. It has a lot of grated coconut it and so they'd be like oh, I like the sweet bread. I'm like well, there's a lot of coconut in that sweet bread and you said you don't like coconut.
So it's not that you don't like coconut, you don't like coconut water, right? So we always will try-- whenever we hit a roadblock like that, we'll always try that same product in a different format because lord knows there's always a different format.
JAYMEE SIRE: Is there anything that they absolutely will not eat?
ROGER MOOKING: One of my daughters is just-- will push mushrooms to the side all day long. So we've just stopped like-- if I cook something with mushrooms, I'll just pick it out for her but she gets the rest of it. And the flavor of the mushroom is in there, but you know who knows.
JAYMEE SIRE: She might come around eventually. Was there anything you didn't eat growing up that you love now?
ROGER MOOKING: Cauliflower. I used to hate cauliflower, boy. Like with a passion. But I saw enough like bougie restaurants do it and I was like, OK, let me revisit the cauliflower thing.
JAYMEE SIRE: Well, as if you don't have enough going on, you're also an award winning recording artist. Do you remember the first CD that you owned?
ROGER MOOKING: You mean actual CD or vinyl? Because I was buying vinyl.
JAYMEE SIRE: Let's do both. Let's do-- what was your first vinyl and then when CDs became a thing, what was your first CD?
ROGER MOOKING: My first vinyl was NWA, "Straight Outta Compton."
JAYMEE SIRE: I love it.
ROGER MOOKING: The first CD I bought was "Graceland," Paul Simon.
JAYMEE SIRE: OK. So who are your musical influences? Obviously it sounds like we're going down another variety path here.
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, man, I'm a globalist. I'm a human from out the gate. You know what I mean? So I grew up-- my dad, aside from like a lot of cooking in our household, my dad was an avid record collector and my brother was a DJ so we were collecting records from day one, you know? My dad-- everything from Santana, Simon and Garfunkel, Nana Mouskouri, old school Calypso, Singing Francine, and Lord Kitchener, and all these people from Trinidad. And then hip hop. All the hip hop classics coming up. Run DMC, Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash, Nucleus, all those records. Yeah, but I love Simon and Garfunkel and Graceland and all these-- so much music out there, it's just beautiful, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah. Do you still have an extensive vinyl collection?
ROGER MOOKING: OK, OK. So Jaymee, you got me on this one. I used to have 2000 pieces of vinyl.
JAYMEE SIRE: Oh my gosh.
ROGER MOOKING: Everything. Like everything under the sun. And I was moving so many times. I used to move like every year, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: Oh wow.
ROGER MOOKING: And-- before I had family and kids and all that-- and I just moved with them one too many times and actually it's the house before the house that we started having kids in is when I said, OK, I'm not moving all these records one last time. I sold them all.
JAYMEE SIRE: Oh no.
ROGER MOOKING: Oh my god, you know how many crates of records that is? And then this place didn't have enough space and I was like oh my god. So I sold them all and I regret it. I really curated those records. I'll be on tour and every place we stopped on tour, we'd stop and be in like Victoria, BC and be like, yo, let's go find a record store and go dig in for-- digging in the crates. We'd be in like Scottsdale, Arizona on tour and we'd be like, let's go find a record store and go digging in the crates of the old vintage places. And so I collected a lot of records and carried them through airports and in my bags and, you know, I curated that collection but I gave it up and I regret it.
JAYMEE SIRE: Who are your current favorite artists right now?
ROGER MOOKING: My current favorite artist. There's an artist named Ondara, O-N-D-A-RA. It's incredible, incredible. I love Kendrick Lamar. I love Snoop's new record is really good actually. Snoop just came with a record and he's talking his ish off on that record. Yes, beautiful thing.
JAYMEE SIRE: What did you think of the halftime performance?
ROGER MOOKING: Yo, I thought it was just monumental to see that many-- like just a hip hop extravaganza happening at the Super Bowl, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah.
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, for me as a kid, growing up in that era and kind of coming up in the birth of that era as well, to see the art form come that far on such a big stage like that it just is a monumental moment for the culture, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah, I absolutely loved it for sure. What do you like to listen to while you're in the kitchen cooking?
ROGER MOOKING: Mostly I listen to podcasts and news. And then sometimes I just put on like classical playlists. Just calming or like jazz playlists and just calm, really chill music. But when I'm in the kitchen-- it's really noisy in my house. I got four young kids. They are noisy, running around, the dog is barking and when we start cooking the dog is barking more because it wants some treats. And they're running because the kids are hungry and they're freaking out. And so I just put on really calm music or some educational podcasts.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JAYMEE SIRE: Coming up next, Roger tells us how he got his start and TV. And later, we talk about his favorite barbecue and his tip for eating very spicy food.
When did being on television come into the mix and was being a host or TV personality always part of the plan or did that just evolve naturally?
ROGER MOOKING: I was coming from the music industry and I've done pretty good in the music industry, right? So I kind of absolved myself-- like, I didn't want to be famous ever again. I was like, I never want to be famous ever again. I love making the crafts, but the other stuff is just stupid, you know? When I started doing cooking, my first job was an executive chef-- was around the corner from where Food Network Canada was just launching and ramping up all these shows. So they, after a while, kind of introduced themselves. I just knew them as Holly and Tonya, you know, and after a while they introduced themselves as Food Network people and I'm like oh, that's cool. Cool. Hopefully you liked your dinner. Have a nice day.
JAYMEE SIRE: [LAUGHS]
ROGER MOOKING: But they're super cool, lovely people so we'd always just kick it and have jokes and stuff like that. I'm real friendly with those people still to this day, but they said, look, you have a good personality, the food is good and all this stuff. Have you ever thought of like doing shows? And I'm like, no, not really. And I was really just a hesitant host. I was happy to just be an anonymous cook. Just work, pay my bills, go home, and call it a day, you know? But they came at me and I liked them so I was like, OK, let's go mess around and then they introduced me to this woman, Leslie [INAUDIBLE] who's running the program in Canada, and we hit it off.
And interestingly enough, a couple of jobs previous to that, Leslie used to be a talent booker at the CBC. So she used to book my band back in the day on CBC and now she's like booking talent for Food Network in Canada, right? So we really hit it off and like a 30 minute meeting turned into like a two hour meeting. And a couple of years later, 2006, we started developing Everyday Exotic. In 2008, we launched Everyday Exotic and then I did really well in Canada. We did 52 episodes of that and then we started selling that around the world. It went to 40 countries and then America picked it up when they launched cooking channel. And then I was been rolling with that ever since.
JAYMEE SIRE: And you've also been all over the country, exploring the ways Americans cook with fire on Man Fire Food as we kind of alluded to at the top of this conversation. What parts of the country are really doing it right?
ROGER MOOKING: You obviously-- you go to Texas and you get all those Texas classics and stuff like that, right? But what's happening in the world is diversity is expanding throughout North America, right? So in Houston, for instance, is one of the most diverse cities in America. So what you're starting to see is the traditional Texas barbecue techniques marrying with things like Filipino cuisine or Vietnamese cuisine. So you can now go-- this one place we shot Koi Barbecue, and they're doing Vietnamese pho and they're putting slabs of Texas smoked brisket on top of the pho, right?
So you're starting to see stuff like that happen. Or you go to hometown barbecue there in Brooklyn that you might know, Bill [INAUDIBLE] spot, and he's doing like some Korean techniques with classic Texas old school smoking and Southern smoking techniques, right? Because he grew up in Brooklyn and you know Brooklyn is like-- so many parts of the world are happening in Brooklyn. And so he brought what he came up with like-- so being around so many cultures and marrying those things, right?
So you're starting to see a lot of that kind of stuff happening, which I'm finding really, really exciting but there's this beautiful classics like my man Rodney Scott. He's got several spots now just if you want that classic whole hog just done right. Rodney's definitely killing it. But so much of the country is doing so many dynamic things with fire. There's René Redzepi up in Seattle area and Oregon and she's doing amazing things. We spent some time with her too and really progressive ways of cooking with fire, right?
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah, I mean, cooking with fire really feels like a ritual of sorts. What kind of cultural significant moments have you experienced doing that show?
ROGER MOOKING: There's been so much. I've learned so much from so many people. I met this one woman who is an archaeologist and also a fire enthusiast. So she studies how people cooked with fire throughout the centuries and she's pulled all these techniques and built all these different ovens and contraptions. And she did this one technique with me that was really amazing where you take dried pine needles and you stand up mussels on a wood board and you stand them upright and then you cover them with this pile of harvested dried pine needles.
And you light the pine needles on fire and it turns into this big kind of fire on top of the wood cutting board, then it dissipates and it's just enough fire to allow the muscles to just open and then get the aromatics coming from the pine needles as well, right? So like that's an old French country technique and she showed me that technique. You know so boom, right there. Like I learned a lot of French cuisine, but I never seen that. And that's what I love about food is that you'll never learn everything about food in one lifetime, right?
JAYMEE SIRE: Yeah, how about-- what's your personal favorite style of barbecue?
ROGER MOOKING: What you really got to address here is the nomenclature of barbecue, right? So when you think of barbecue, what do you think of?
JAYMEE SIRE: Growing up in Montana it was just grilling. It wasn't necessarily smoking something for hours. I think now I think of barbecue I definitely-- Texas comes to mind where you're thinking of brisket, you're thinking of pulled pork maybe from one of the other areas, whole hog like you mentioned with Rodney Scott. Yeah, I mean, I definitely-- I definitely go more traditional, but obviously every culture probably has their own version of barbecue, right?
ROGER MOOKING: It's interesting about the nomenclature because traditional moves from one thing to the other. So in Canada like Montana--
JAYMEE SIRE: That's true.
ROGER MOOKING: Like in Montana, when we say, yo, we're going to have a barbecue. As long as somebody brings some kind of food and you put it over some type of fire, then we're barbecuing. And there's beer and stuff like that, that's a barbecue, right? But if you say, barbecue in South Carolina and it's anything but whole hog, low and slow, that's not barbecue. They don't consider like ribs, they don't-- like it's a whole different thing. If you're in Texas and you're talking barbecue, then it's a whole gamut range of things. From ribs, to brisket, to sausages, and depending on what part.
So it really comes down to nomenclature and it's a really, really tricky thing. Like what's my favorite barbecue? Persian barbecue. It's lots of beautiful kabobs, man. Spice kabobs and then they grill the tomato with it as well. And then you get the fresh bread and it's like slap that in there. It's like ooh, sauce it up.
JAYMEE SIRE: So good.
ROGER MOOKING: It's delicious.
JAYMEE SIRE: In your opinion, is there a wrong way to serve barbecue?
ROGER MOOKING: Raw and cold would be too definite failures.
JAYMEE SIRE: I don't even know if that would qualify if it was raw.
ROGER MOOKING: That's a good point actually. That's a good point, yeah.
JAYMEE SIRE: You've also co-hosted heat seekers with Aaron Sanchez where you travel around the states in search of the spiciest plates. What is the hottest thing that you've ever tasted?
ROGER MOOKING: OK, so we were in Florida, we were shooting with the mayor of this small town in Florida and the mayor was trying to keep it cool, but these people like they burnt like a whole bunch of different kind of chilies, they torched them--
JAYMEE SIRE: [LAUGHS]
ROGER MOOKING: So basically imagine like a bowl half full of chilies. Like a Vietnamese pho bowl, right? Half full of chilies and then they just filled it up with broth and then pureed it. That's basically what we drank with some noodles in it, right?
JAYMEE SIRE: Oh OK.
ROGER MOOKING: And man, the mayor was there sweating and like we're dying, our noses are running and the mayor's like playing it cool. As soon as the cameras stop rolling he's like oh my god, I got to go-- ran to the bathroom, but that was the hottest thing ever.
JAYMEE SIRE: I mean, how do you cope with something that's like super spicy? I mean, is milk the answer or do you have another trick up your sleeve?
ROGER MOOKING: So we came up with a couple of different techniques. One we would like drink the pink stuff before you eat and then after that chase it with Greek yogurt laden with honey. That's the magic right there.
JAYMEE SIRE: OK.
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah.
JAYMEE SIRE: So if I ever go on the hot ones I'll remember that. What ingredients do you love incorporating into your own dishes that really bring the heat?
ROGER MOOKING: I have a recent re-obsession with cumin right now. I really love cumin and I use it aggressively actually. Sometimes you use it sparingly, but I've been using it aggressively lately with fresh herbs and it this magic to so, so many dishes like that. So I've been playing with that. In the realm of chilies, I love all chilies as long as they stop at around the Scotch bonnet Habanero. Anything past the Scotch bonnet and Habanero is just unnecessary.
JAYMEE SIRE: You can't really taste it. Yeah.
ROGER MOOKING: It's just unnecessary. You're just trying to win a bet.
JAYMEE SIRE: Well, you've also been a judge on Chopped and also Guy's Grocery Games. When it comes to Triple G, what's your favorite part about filming?
ROGER MOOKING: Yo, just seeing the environment, man. That's a beautiful set, man. It's like so many people working on that set and everybody is so coordinated and there's such a great, great vibe coming off that set. And I tell you, Guy Fieri is just straight up one of the greatest humans walking the planet. He just is such a gracious, kind, beautiful soul. Just takes care of everybody around him. He's just a beautiful person, man, and he deserves all the success that he has because he's just such a generous person. So just being in that environment, around those people. Everybody is just all love, no drama, all day because everybody's working for the same goal because there's just so much love that comes from the top down on that set.
JAYMEE SIRE: Ah, I love that. I mean, you can feel that. It seems like everybody-- from the judges, to guide, to everybody there competing-- everyone's just kind of like a family it seems. So it's always good to hear that that's really what it's like as well. Does it get intense on set during the competitions?
ROGER MOOKING: Oh yeah, it's heated. Those people really don't know what they're going to do. They're challenging, time is crunchy and we're watching guys walking around about to change the rules on you any second. So you don't know what's going on. And it seems like it's just nothing is really-- I mean, a lot is planned but it has the feeling like if Guy just wants to throw a haymaker in, the haymakers coming and he just made that decision audible right now. Bowman, everybody got to deal with it. And so there's all that and everybody doesn't know what's going on so it's really exciting as a judge to be part of that environment, you know?
JAYMEE SIRE: What about when you go grocery shopping? I know you said you like to pick up different things each trip, but is there a couple of things that you always grab at the store?
ROGER MOOKING: No, never. Well, butter. Butter, salt. That's about it. Everything else is fair game.
JAYMEE SIRE: Well, this has been such a blast. We're going to finish off with some rapid fire questions and then we have one final question that we ask all of our guests on Food Network Obsessed. So rapid fire round. When it comes to hot wings, drums or flats?
ROGER MOOKING: Flats.
JAYMEE SIRE: Blue cheese or ranch?
ROGER MOOKING: Neither.
JAYMEE SIRE: Chef that you would love to cook dinner with?
ROGER MOOKING: Emeril Lagasse.
JAYMEE SIRE: Mm. Favorite game to play with your daughters?
ROGER MOOKING: It's time to wash the dishes. I just cooked dinner.
JAYMEE SIRE: [LAUGHS] It sounds like a really fun game for that.
[LAUGHTER]
That's why I started cooking at a young age because I didn't want to do the dishes.
ROGER MOOKING: Oh, slick, slick.
JAYMEE SIRE: Herb that you always have on hand?
ROGER MOOKING: I really love dill. Dill is my new obsession currently.
JAYMEE SIRE: OK. I like dill as well. What about seasoning you can't live without?
ROGER MOOKING: Fish sauce.
JAYMEE SIRE: OK. Go to easy snack?
ROGER MOOKING: Chow. In the Caribbean we make this dish called Chow and you use any kind of fruit like mango, oranges, papaya, and you mix it with chilies and citrus and a couple of spices. It's salty and it's delicious.
JAYMEE SIRE: That sounds fantastic.
ROGER MOOKING: Oh, it's the best snack just before dinner like a couple hours before.
JAYMEE SIRE: I'm going to try that.
ROGER MOOKING: Hits the spot.
JAYMEE SIRE: Favorite pizza toppings?
ROGER MOOKING: Ground beef, red onion, and jalapeno.
JAYMEE SIRE: Mm. OK. Throwing a little curve-ball there. I like that. All right, so final question. Like I said, we ask this to every single guest that we have here on Food Network Obsessed. What would be on the menu for your perfect food day? So we want to hear what you're eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. If you want to throw in some snacks that's totally up to you. There are no rules to this question. So calories don't count. You can time travel, spend absurd amounts of money, anybody can cook it for you and we just want to hear what would be your ideal food day.
ROGER MOOKING: OK, so I might go to Paris and get a classic baguette with that really good French butter and some like shave truffles inside of it.
JAYMEE SIRE: Ooh, OK.
ROGER MOOKING: That would be in some nice salt. Some fleur de sel, that would be nice. Sit on a bench, watch everybody smoke and--
JAYMEE SIRE: Watch the world go by?
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, that'd be cool. I'd like that for breakfast and Paris is beautiful. Then I would go to, actually my favorite restaurant in the world, is this place called Davies Corner. It's basically a cab stand type of spot in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the area called BSE. They do this dish called roti chennai, which is a very thin, crispy, tender type of roti. It's a little bit sweet. And then you can dip it with like fish pickle or curry lentils and stuff like that. That is like one of my-- I could eat that everyday.
And then I would have a dip over for a little bit of-- some pho. I love pho. I mentioned it like 10 times already in this thing, but have a nice bowl of pho. I'd go to Vietnam, near the border of Cambodia, there's some good little spots to get some pho and I would dive into a big bowl of pho. Then for dinner, I might get a goat roti with some tomato choka on the side, right? Made by-- we had an old family friend in Trinidad when I was growing up and she made great, great goat so I'd go back in time and visit her and have her bless us-- Sharon-- you know, bless us with her thing and some dumplings on the side with that.
And then for dessert, I mean, I don't know. I really love ice cream. Man, I love ice cream. Coconut ice cream. Would just go down to Trinidad or Colombia. They do really good ice cream. Or actually, have you been to Istanbul?
JAYMEE SIRE: I have not. No. I've always wanted to go. Yeah.
ROGER MOOKING: Turkey has the best ice cream on earth.
JAYMEE SIRE: Really?
ROGER MOOKING: Yeah, they have this mechanism where they chill these vats and they beat the cream basically.
JAYMEE SIRE: OK.
ROGER MOOKING: And they beat it. They beat it and that's how it forms ice cream. And instead of churning it, they sit there manually beat it with these things and then dig it out and it's incredible. So smooth, and creamy, and delicious. So maybe I fly over to Istanbul--
JAYMEE SIRE: Sure.
ROGER MOOKING: --and get a Turkish ice cream, pistachio flavor. Please.
JAYMEE SIRE: Well, that sounds fantastic and a perfect end to your perfect food day. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. It was so much fun.
ROGER MOOKING: Thank you so much, Jaymee. I appreciate the Food Network Obsessed.
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JAYMEE SIRE: So much fun chatting with Roger. He is a well-traveled Renaissance man of our time. And you can catch more of him on Discovery Plus.
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Thanks so much for listening, and make sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss a thing. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review. We love it when you do that. That's all for now. We'll catch you foodies next Friday.
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