I’ve always enjoyed casual conversation and  have rarely been averse to chewing on a nice hunk of fat, especially if there is wine involved. But it wasn’t until I cooked out with some mochileros that I learned the meaning of the expression “to chew the fat.”

Mochilero means backpack, and the mochileros are a tribe of Argentine wanderers who camp their way across some of the finer parts of the landscape, gathering around the evening’s fire to drink maté, play guitar and plan the next day’s adventures. It was next to one such fire, under a starry night in San Martín, that I was like “wow, I’m chewing the fat.”

A piece of meat had been cooked over wood coals. Red wine was flowing. There was a bowl of salad and a loaf of bread, and we all ate our share. As we lingered in a joyous collective afterglow, I declined the mate gourd when it was my turn, preferring to continue gnawing on a certain bone and its attached glob of chewy, fatty material. This matrix of fat and connective tissue continued to surrender flavor as I chewed. And as I chewed I sipped my red. Several times I lay my bone back on the grill to heat and re-melt the chewy juicy glob.

I imagine language evolved in ancient scenes like this, around the same fires that hardened the spears and cooked the meat of our ancestors. They chewed the fat, told stories and planned the next day’s adventures.

In addition to stimulating conversation, some anthropologists believe cooking food facilitated human brain development by increasing the efficiency with which calories are extracted from food. Because cooking produces soft, energy-rich foods, fewer calories are spent on digestion, leaving a higher margin of caloric recovery. This supposedly allowed our brains—the most energy-intensive organ we have—to grow.

Though fire was the original stove, today’s cooks have largely left it behind. With the loss of direct fire-to-food contact, we’ve also lost touch with its feelings and flavors. But fire remains available and at our service, a genie in a bottle that can be conjured anywhere, anytime. And when we do, the experience of tending hot coals takes us to an archetypal place of smoke and ash—which, by the way, we’re now told, are carcinogenic. Good habits, some of which I’ll explain soon, are key to good cooking over fire.

In his cookbook Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way, Argentine chef Francis Mallmann writes: “I adore dissonance in food—two tastes fighting each other. It wakes up your palate and surprises you. … The right amount of burning or charring can be delicious and seductive: a burnt tomato, for example, has a dark crust bordering on bitter, while the inside is soft and gentle in texture and taste.”

Applying the right amounts of smoke and charring to your food is a delicate act that’s easy to overdo. You want the bitter flavors to be team players and not take over.

Some woods burn hot and quick, some have sweet smoke, and some throw a lot of sparks. Hardwoods are safer and better for cooking than soft woods. Wood from fruit trees is usually good, although chokecherry wood has bitter smoke. Cherry, meanwhile, is one of the best—burning hot without too much flame and producing sweet smoke. Apple is up there with cherry. Hickory and alder are good options too. Whichever wood you use, it must be fully dry and cut into manageable chunks.

One common rookie maneuver is to start cooking before the fire completely burns down to coals. This exposes your food to licking flames that can over-char and over-smoke the food.

Start the wood fire about an hour before you want to cook—any fire pit or charcoal grill will do. Spread the coals evenly under your grill grate and wait for them to develop a layer of white ash.

Your steak should be at room temperature, and seasoned with salt and pepper. Some meat cooks love their marinades. I prefer the simple taste of good meat. If anything, I’ll often serve my salted and peppered meat with a sauce, like mushroom gravy, or perhaps a curry, or maybe chimichurri, an Argentine garlic-and-herb vinaigrette.

Chimichurri is best prepared a day ahead so the flavors can develop. It will continue to age nicely for a few days in the fridge. Applied to fire-cooked meat, the spicy, oily, acidic fragrance of the chimichurri interacts with the lightly charred, crispy, smoky exterior of the meat to create the kind of harmonic dissonance that makes Mallmann homesick.

To make my version of Mallman’s recipe for chimichurri, dissolve one tablespoon of coarse salt into a cup of water. Chop a head of garlic, a cup of fresh parsley and 1/4 cup fresh or dried oregano (or marjoram), and add it all to a blender. Blend, adding 1/4 cup red wine vinegar and then 1/2 cup olive oil. Finally, blend in the salt water. Transfer to a jar with a tight-fitting lid and keep it in the refrigerator, preferably overnight.

When your coals have burned down and you’re ready to cook meat, scrub the grill grate clean. You should be able to hold your hand at grill level—a distance of two to four inches from the coals—for about two seconds before the heat forces it away. Oil the grill with a piece of fat or an oil-soaked paper towel. The meat should sizzle when it hits the metal.

After five minutes, lift the steak and rotate 90 degrees—this prevents over-burning by the hot metal grate. After four more minutes, turn the steak over and repeat the process, turning 90 degrees after five minutes. After that final turning, it’s two minutes to medium rare.

At which point it’s even better than a burned tomato.