#mesquite

When cooking in the offset smoker, I tend to use 3 types of wood depending on what i'm cooking. I buy kiln-dried wood splits at my neighborhood Ace Hardware and one thing I've consistently noticed is that I struggle to use mesquite / keep a fire going with only mesquite logs. Just just don't want to burn / they like threatening to go out.

I know mesquite burns hotter and so I'm probably trying to cook too cool with it which is why i'm always needing to babysit more / deal with a fire threatening to go out, but I have been managing.

For a lot of my cooks I'll start with a bed of charcoal to act as a long term base / igniter for whatever hardwood i'm using, but I can make my fire too hot for too long (might need 90 minutes to two hours to really stabilize a temp around 250 with the smoke production I want, feeding a split or two every 20 mins to maintain.

Anyway, I was trying to build a hardwood only fire out of mesquite... and I just can't seem to get it really going. Anyone else have this problem? I don't want to @ my BBQ Daddy Cullen here, but if anyone has more developed knowledge, I'd love to hear how you work with mesquite.

I look like a genius when I cook with hickory, competent when I cook with Cherry, and like a first timer those few times I try to work with mesquite.

Mesquite trees I took these two pictures.

There 26 different species of mesquite trees.

And it is one of the few trees you can make flour from.

The mesquite beans can be dried and ground up. It can also be used to make a type of coffee.

Also houses the tree bark scorpion which is translucent.

I did not take this scorpion picture