Ancestral Smoke Signals

The snow is finally melting, spring is coming (none too soon…), and with it comes the primeval urge to get outside and cook with fire: on the Weber Kettle, on the Big Green Egg, on the Traeger, on the Oklahoma Joe, on the Kamado Joe, on the Pit Boss, on the (insert name of your favorite outside cooking contraption here). This goes way back to the very beginning for us humans.

Witness the Hartley Mammoth Site in the Chama Basin of Northern New Mexico.

Archeologists think it may date to 37,500 years BCE – possibly the oldest known discovery of humans in North America, and it contains compelling evidence of early North Americans cooking wooly mammoth over an open fire. (We’re working on a reliable source for prime wooly mammoth, but for now you are going to have to settle for Dino ribs.) People, meat, and fire go way back, and it’s a very big deal.

Throwing it forward to the 1950s, while in the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously used the “Dirty Steak” method by tossing them straight on to red-hot coals – no grate! (Doubt it? Try it:  the results are amazing!)

Now fast forward to 2026 CE and the Llano & Rye Cook Site in Southeastern New Hampshire on the “old mammoth path” otherwise known as Route 1/Lafayette Road: 

No archeologists or past Presidents have visited so far, but we’re out there cooking meat over fire just like our predecessors. And, not surprisingly, passersby have pulled over, walked up, and asked “what are those?!!!,” while pointing at our cookers. It’s in our collective DNA, this attraction to cooking with live fire:  we are drawn to it.

Sure, just about anything you can cook with fire outside you can cook in an oven inside. And, it might be easier. But everyone knows in their bones that the experience of the cook itself won’t be the same. You won’t feel the warmth of the fire; you won’t smell the smoke; you won’t feel the open air; you won’t experience the mojo of being out there cooking like our ancestors. That only comes with fire and taking your time.

So, whether you are planning on cooking in the backyard this weekend or coming to join us at Llano & Rye, Spring has sprung, and it’s time to get on out there and enjoy some food cooked over a fire – just like it was back in the very beginning. 

Enjoy!