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Paid $95 for a cheap offset smoker off Facebook in Garland, and it taught me more than any $800 rig would
Back in March I grabbed a rusted Char-Griller offset for $95 from a guy in Garland who was moving to an apartment with no patio. The firebox door didn't seal and the stack was so short that smoke just rolled out the top like a chimney with no draw. I spent the first three cooks fighting 75 degree temp swings and ruining two racks of ribs that came out gray and chewy. Then I read that you can extend the stack with a $12 dryer vent elbow and it changed the whole draft. I still can't hold 225 for more than 40 minutes without feeding it, but I learned to read the fire by the color of the smoke instead of the dial on the lid. If I had started on a $1,200 pellet grill I would know nothing about coal beds or air flow. Now I want to know, did starting cheap make anyone else a better cook, or did you just get frustrated and buy the expensive one anyway?
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hunt.nora9d ago
Watched my buddy do the exact opposite and drop $900 on a Traeger as his first cooker, and he still can't tell when a fire is running dirty because the thing just beeps at him and he trusts it. Seems like this same thing happens with everything, guitars, cameras, golf clubs, people buy the fancy version first and skip right past the part where you actually learn the feel of the thing. There's something about a crappy tool that forces you to pay attention, because it won't cover for you, and that attention is the real skill you're building. Your dryer vent fix is a perfect example, you figured out the physics of draft because you had no other choice, and now you own that knowledge forever. Bet those gray ribs taught you more than a hundred good ones ever would have.
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