Guy at the Memphis in May contest told me to stop chasing clean smoke and I still think about it
Two years back at Memphis in May, I was hovering over my WSM at 2am stressing about thin blue smoke when the guy on the next site, a pitmaster named Earl who had been doing this for 30 odd years, told me my problem was I was cooking for the judges instead of the people standing around my tent. He said the best rack he ever turned in came off a cooker he hadn't touched in four hours because he was too busy talking to his grandkid on the phone. So my question is, has anyone else had a seasoned guy say something offhand that completely flipped how you run your pit?
Earl was basically saying the meat knows when you stop fiddling with it, and the second you walk away to actually enjoy the cook, that's when your timing and instincts take over without you even noticing. That grandkid phone call wasn't a distraction from the pit, it was the whole point of it.