Roger Mooking stars in "Man Fire Food"

Fire. It fascinates us, it enraptures us and it defines us as humans. The scene of a group of cave men (and women!) smashing rocks or rubbing sticks together to get a few sparks is a classic in science fiction. Even the plot of this year's "The Jungle Book" was about how fire set the humans apart from the animals of the jungle.

Chef Roger Mooking is even more fascinated by fire than most; of course, being that he's a chef, it's the culinary uses of the flames that he's most interested in. So interested, in fact, that he has made a whole TV show about the stuff.

"Man Fire Food" is Mooking's travelog, of sorts. He's traveled all over the world to check out the weird, wonderful and inventive ways that people cook with flames. This week's episode, airing Tuesday, Aug. 9, on Cooking Channel, follows him as he visits a pair of chefs who are reinventing the backyard rotisserie.

First, he stops by Alexander City, Alabama, where a local chef has built a unique contraption that uses fire to cook some of the most delicious and succulent legs of lamb that Mooking has ever had the pleasure of sinking his teeth into.

Then, our host is headed east, to Charleston, South Carolina. There, he'll be exploring Cypress, a local favorite whose wood-fired food is famous around the city. It's what's happening outside of the kitchen that has Mooking interested, though: the restaurant's chef has built a backyard rotisserie that can handle entire strings of ducks or chickens.

They may be inventive, but these rotisseries are far from the most creative ways of cooking with fire that the Canadian chef has come across in "Man Fire Food." He's experienced a meal cooked in the shell of an old airplane that's been converted into a cooker, a whole-pig rig made out of two steel troughs wired together, and even a unique cooker that burns coal instead of wood or charcoal.

Fire sure is fascinating, and even more so when it's used in inventive ways to make a succulent meal. Roger Mooking's "Man Fire Food" airs Tuesdays on Cooking Channel.