Fyi, the point of "cooking the wood" is to remove moisture. You need to "cook" it above the boiling point of water at your elevation. At sea level that is 212 degrees Fahrenheit. At 5000 ft here in denver, its about 202 or so. 210-220 should be good.
You need to weigh your material and the weight needs to be very accurate, so use a postal scale or something that is very accurate. Write the exact weight on the piece you are drying and place it in your heating device. (An electric smoker does great). Dry your piece for several hours, keeping the temperature above 220, but below 250. Pull the piece out of the oven, weight it. Write that weight on the item and place it immediately back in the oven. Dry it for another full hour, pull it out. Weight it. If the piece has lost any weight from the previous weigh-in, immediately place it back in the oven and continue the weighing / drying process until the piece has not lost any weight for 2 consecutive hours. Once youve reached that stage the piece needs to immediately go into an air right container, the vacu-seal system sold at Costco works great. Vacu-seal the item and then place it in a Zip lock bag, with as much air as possible removed, until the piece cools to room temperature.
The reason you need to seal the piece in an air tight container is because it will naturally try to absorb moisture from the atmosphere to get back to the relative humidity of your area.
Once cooled, immediately place the piece in the cactus juice and commence pulling vacuum, or if you are not ready to stabilize, ensure the item remains in an air tight container until you are ready to stabilize. Pull vacuum until there are no bubbles coming out of the juice. Once the bubbles have stopped completely, turn off the vacuum and allow the piece to soak in the juice for twice as long as you pulled vacuum. For example, if you pulled vacuum for 24 hours, then the piece will need to soak for at least 48 additional hours or more. Once that is done, cook the piece at the recommended temperature for the recommended time (follow the directions on the cactus juice label). Stabalizing is a labor intensive and lengthy process, but it is worth the effort in my opinion. The stabalized piece will never "move" and in my opinion, will have a better finish than a natural, unstabalized piece.