Holy Smokes or Trial By Fire, if you prefer.
Man, learning from your mistakes is rough business:
1) Check the weather before you pull your steel smoker out to burn it off at lunch. Stewpit rain.
2) Charcoal that is 3 years old is really, really hard to light.
3) An acetylene torch will light 3 year old charcoal if you stay at it long enough.
4) Ever want to fill your PM box? Just mention on C.C you need recipes for smoking meat. Had no idea I was so popular nor that you gewbers take your meat so serious. :)
5) An 18" firebox and a 16" cooking chamber needs a honkin' bunch of coals to reach 250 degrees.
Wannabe...
Weird, I thought I had arrived when I bought this cooker, but now I realize the journey has just begun. Planning to sacrifice some ribs this week after work if I can get a good forecast.
I repeat this you WILL SACRIFICE MEAT and
not in a good way. Promise ya. Try you some spare ribs sometime and TRY and cook them like you do baby backs. Talk about shoe leather. LOL Spares are better tasting that baby backs and when you learn to trim Spares into Kansas City cuts, you'll have you some fine ribs CHEAP. Ya even have some meat left over to make some good pork stew