Charcoal and you; picking the right bag.

As we've discussed in earlier posts, charcoal is the only way we cook. On very rare occasions I will use a propane grill at a friend's house if I need to, but my loyalties lie in fuel that comes out of a bag, not a bottle.

There are many brands of commercially available charcoal, but not all coals are created equal. The one thing that I think is most important to mention at the beginning of this article is this; NEVER use an easy start or "match light" charcoal if you care about the way your food tastes. This also includes the stuff that you "light in the bag" to save time. This stuff is always made with some type of chemical accelerant in the formula; this is similar to soaking what could have been perfectly acceptable charcoal briquets in a bucket of lighter fluid. You can smell it as soon as you open the bag, and since it isn't just on the outside layer, that smell will continue to permeate your food as you cook. Nobody likes drinking gasoline, so why make food that tastes like it? You also shouldn't add more of this type of briquet in the middle of cooking, especially not by pouring the bag into a hot grill... the little chunks of broken briquets and the dust in the bottom of the bag are very flammable.

There are two major types of charcoal you can buy in the store, lump hardwood and briquet. Almost everywhere you go you can get the basic blue bag of Kingsford, and to be honest, that is what I use most of the time.

Hardwood "Lump" Charcoal:

While not nearly as uniform in size or appearance as briquets, lump charcoal is made the same way it has been for centuries. Wood is allowed to smolder, but not actively burn due to deprivation of oxygen. The end result is mostly carbon; it is a lot lighter than it started out, and burns in a more predictable fashion than wood chunks would. Lump charcoal is not as readily available as briquettes, and usually costs substantially more for the high quality stuff. Another thing worth mentioning is that the lumps can be quite fragile; try to get a fresh looking bag that hasn't been too banged up, and don't throw it around on the way home unless you really want smaller chunks and more dust for some reason.

Lump charcoal lights faster and burns shorter than briquettes do, but with no additives. This makes it a little better for temperature control if you have to raise the temp quickly, but you will have to use more volume over long duration smokes or long cooking sessions with a lot of food being grilled. This faster burning quality can be lessened (if not eliminated) by limiting the flow of oxygen during use. Many people swear that it tastes a lot better, but I haven't found the difference in the brands I've tried so remarkable as to swear off briquets totally. Try both and see what you think.

One brand that I would warn you to consider avoiding is the Cowboy Brand Hardwood Charcoal; my personal experience with the stuff has been that the bag had a lot of bits small enough to fall through the charcoal grate or chimney starter without ever producing heat, and it burned fairly quickly, even with the lid on and the vents almost completely closed. The only positive thing I could say about it is that it is the cheapest lump charcoal I've ever seen marketed, but this is one of the situations where you get what you pay for. Many other people have reported on other sites that they got strange looking non-wood items as a surprise in the bag. Since this isn't a toy in the bottom of the cereal box, I wouldn't want to find any in mine.

I have had a lot more experience with briquets, but look forward to trying out a more varied range of lump charcoal in the future. There is a great database of lump charcoal types and information maintained by the Naked Whiz that is absolutely worth reading. They review all different types of lump charcoal themselves using a very thorough scientific method and allow consumers to submit ratings for the products as well. Based on a review I read there of a local store brand, I plan on picking up a bag of it to try out this weekend.

Briquets:

The original Kingsford charcoal briquet was made from the junk lying on the floor after body panels for cars were made. Yes, I'm being completely serious. Lucky for us, this was the 1920's and the manufacturing plant belonged to Henry Ford. Back in those days, car bodies were made of wood and not metal. Good thing too, because metal shrapnel from the floor of the Nissan plant probably doesn't burn very well compared to sawdust and wood scraps. I imagine the taste would be different too. Must be one of those "right place at the right time" things.

Today, I imagine the manufacturing process and formula has changed slightly, but not the concept. Without getting too much into the way briquets are made, I will note that there are several non-wood elements added to the mix to promote even burning and to allow them to stick together into those little rounded black pillows. Kingsford uses starch to bind the briquets together, mineral char and carbon as well as wood char for fuel, and sodium nitrate and sawdust to make them light more easily. They also add limestone to color the ash white, and borax makes an appearance as a compound to help them release from the mold during manufacturing. Does this taste like anything while its burning? Maybe so. The price and availability of briquets from Kingsford is enough to offset the possibility for many, including myself. As I said earlier, most times I buy the basic Kingsford stuff for my BBQ needs; plenty of competitions have been won with the stuff over the years.

I did try a bag of Kingsford Competition Briquets a few weekends ago while camping, and I was impressed with their performance. The ingredient list on these is a lot lower than with their blue-bagged brethren, including only wood char, starch for binding it all together and borax to release it from the mold. A very scientific review of this new offering from Kingsford was posted on the Virtual Weber Bullet site, showing the fact that they burn faster and produce less ash than the standard issue Kingsford stuff. The attempt was to make something similar in taste and performance to lump charcoal but in the convenient briquet form. I am looking forward to doing a head-to-head comparison of the two at a later date to see if there is a noticeable difference in taste. They do cost almost double what the regular briquets do, so keep that in mind. They were definitely worth another try from what I've seen.

There are plenty of other briquets made by other manufacturers, including many store brands available based on where you live. A lot of times, a little research on the internet can tell you who the products are actually made by, and some of them are actually high quality stuff for less money than the bigger brands. In this case it pays to do your research.

As Nick mentioned in a previous article, the best way to start coals quickly is the chimney starter, and the Weber Rapidfire chimney is the best I've ever used. If you don't already have one, get one soon. Even if you swear you can't taste the lighter fluid, consider this: not only does it light them quickly with no lighter fluid, it costs less than a few bottles of that junk and won't run out.

In the coming months, we'll be trying out several different kinds of charcoal to see what we can learn. We'll let you know what we find out.

Now go outside and cook something!