diff --git a/.config b/.config
index 8a4f7031c8..04f09cbf11 100644
--- a/.config
+++ b/.config
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
 PODMAN_BUILD?=0
 REDBEAR_ALLOW_PROTECTED_FETCH=1
-COOKBOOK_MAKE_JOBS=4
+# COOKBOOK_MAKE_JOBS intentionally unset: the cookbook derives it from the
+# build-redbear.sh -j value (cook_build.rs sets it from cli_jobs), so the single
+# -j flag governs both recipe-level and per-recipe parallelism. Hardcoding it
+# here silently capped EVERY recipe's compile at that value no matter what -j
+# was passed, which on a many-core host left most of the machine idle.
+# Re-add only to deliberately clamp per-recipe compiles below -j.