Roger Mooking to Star in New Cooking Channel Series MAN FIRE FOOD, Premiering 9/18

The heat is on as chef Roger Mooking travels the country to discover inventive ways to cook with fire, in Cooking Channel's new series MAN FIRE FOOD, premiering Tuesday, September 18th at 10pm ET/7pm PT. Roger endures the heat as he visits with pit masters, chefs and home cooks, all looking to create complex, flavorful dishes utilizing the element of fire. Whether cooking over an open fire in a rustic chuck wagon or smoking meat from inside a double-decker, Roger follows the smoke signals for a mouthful of flavor and a whole lot of heat.

In the series premiere, Roger travels to the Carolinas for a unique barbecue experience that opens his eyes to a new world of fire. He starts at the family-run Skylight Inn in Ayden, NC where they have served whole-hog style barbecue for 65 years. After loading the wood and burning the coal for their 170 square foot smoker Roger helps prepare the hogs for the fire and sinks his teeth into their legendary barbecue pork. Next stop is Greer, SC for Bovinova - a two-day meat-filled feast started by five food-loving friends. While there, Roger is introduced to the custom-built cow rack used to roast a 1,000 pound cow over a colossal open flame and feed more than 600 barbecue lovers.

Upcoming episodes feature visits to Pacifica, Calif., where Roger helps a pit master prepare a whole pig for a Hawaiian-style barbecue right on the coast; Austin, Texas to see how South American parilla-style rib roasts and pork steaks are cooked to perfection on a homemade grill; and Grain Valley, Mo. to meet a local mechanic who has transformed a retired Cessna airplane into a smoker for everything from pork butts to chicken.

Roger Mooking is the host and co-creator of his own internationally broadcast television series Everyday Exotic and host of Man Fire Food on Cooking Channel. He is the co-host of the hit show Heat Seekers on Food Network. To add to his growing plate, Roger's highly anticipated first cookbook Everyday Exotic: The Cookbook hit shelves in 2011. In addition Mooking is the recording artist and creator of Soul Food; a unique food and music project released by Warner Music. For Roger, music and the epicurean world are seamless. One feeds the body, the other the soul; it is all food in all its various forms.

Man Fire Food is produced by IW Productions LLC.

COOKING CHANNEL (www.cookingchanneltv.com) is an entertainment brand dedicated to today's passionate food lover. For food people, by food people, Cooking Channel is the answer to a growing hunger for more content devoted to food and cooking in every dimension from global cuisines to international travel, history and unconventional how-to's. Scripps Networks Interactive (NYSE: SNI), which also owns and operates DIY Network.