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Rant: hit 100 cooks on my offset last Saturday and I'm more frustrated than proud
Fired up the Oklahoma Joe at 5am for two pork butts and when I added it to the log that made cook number 100 since I bought the thing two years ago. Sounds like a milestone right? Except I looked back and my first 40 or so cooks were straight garbage, dry flats, creosote taste, temp swings of 75 degrees every 20 minutes. So really I've only had maybe 25 cooks I'd serve to somebody who wasn't related to me. That number bugged me way more than the 100 did. Anybody else go back through their old notes and realize half the learning curve was just you being stubborn about fire management?
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seanjohnson1d ago
The "stubborn about fire management" line hit home for me. I ran splits that were way too big for the first year on my rig and kept wondering why my temp graph looked like a heart monitor. The fix was dumb simple, split smaller and preheat the next stick on top of the firebox before it goes in. That alone cut my swings from 50 degrees down to maybe 15. Your 25 good cooks out of 100 is honestly a normal ratio for the first couple years, most guys just never write anything down so they never see it. One tip that helps me now, I mark each cook in my notes with a letter grade and only re-read the A and B ones when I'm planning a cook, the bad ones already taught me what they were gonna teach me. 100 cooks in two years is a lot of reps, and the fact that you went back and graded yourself means you're already past the part that trips most people up. What's the one thing you changed that made the biggest jump in quality?
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