Can you be a good Egger even if you're a bad cook?

Short answer: YES. My husband never cooked anything until we got a BGE - he "heated" things, but never cooked.

We moved into a new house with a great deck in 2011, and he expressed interest in learning to grill. I made him cook on a clapped out Weber for the first year because I didn't believe he was really interested. Cooking a Surf & Turf Xmas dinner in 40 degree weather finally convinced me he was interested. 

We bought our BGE in April 2012. We read a lot at first, and were a little scared because it was so different than anything we knew anything about. So we tried easy stuff at first: brats, turkey burgers, steaks.

Then the summer corn came in, and we tried that. Then we decided corn with tri tip was a great idea (and it was!) Then we got a veggie basket, and started grilling veggies. Then we got a pizza stone, and tried that. (Awesome, BTW)! Then we got a second rack, and some bricks to raise it into the dome, and cooked bigger dinners all at once.

We pulled out an old cast iron skillet, and made maple bourbon pork chops (and loved juicy pork for probably the first time ever at home). Then we got cedar planks, and experimented with salmon. Then we got skewers and tried prawns.

In short (I know, too late!) almost everything we've tried has been excellent. We've read a lot here, and talk about what we want our next effort to be. We are now experimenting with using the Egg as an oven - tomorrow we're doing Smoked Mac and Cheese, and if the pizza is anything to judge it by, it's gonna be awesome.

You don't have to know or try everything. We're not big ribs fans, so we've never tried that. We need to find another version of fish (other than cedar-planked salmon). We need to figure out another beef item, instead of steak, tri tip and steak kebabs. But we now, after 3 years, have a VERY solid repertoire of choices.

We've been VERY restrained in our tools, but we've been very pleased with a Thermapen, OveGloves, cedar planks, a pizza stone, an extra rack + bricks, along with standard BBQ tools: spatula, tongs, fork.

We've also taken notes, and that has helped with replication. What worked well, what needed more cooking, less cooking, pulling at a lower temp for true medium rare beef, marinades we liked, rubs that we didn't, etc.

You can do this. If my husband can become a more-than-competent griller in three years (and he has!), you can, too!

There are some amazing cooks on this forum, but they weren't born with the ability.  I believe it comes with practice, and to their credit they have practiced hard and developed the skill.  I happen to think that anyone that puts the time in and has a brain in their head can learn to be a good cook.  

Average joe American is a terrible cook, but wicked awesome at finding the nearest drive thru. (that used to be me a few yrs. back)

Ozzie_Isaac said:

I got the egg because it makes it socially acceptable to start drinking at 9am.

As an aside the food is pretty great dispite me.

If you don't drink in the morning, you can't drink all day!