Choosing the Right Charcoal for Your Grill
Lump Charcoal
)
Thanks to its ability to produce high heat and its clean-burning nature, lump charcoal is considered the best type of charcoal. It’s generally the required fuel source for most ceramic kamado grills, and we highly recommend it for other charcoal grills, too. Lump charcoal is made by burning wood in a kiln without much oxygen for a long period of time, resulting in what’s essentially dense hunks of carbon. With lump charcoal, your grill can get extremely hot and even pack the potential for an excellent sear on any meat.
Unlike briquette charcoal, lump fuel has no fillers or additives that give food a charred, oily taste. Lump charcoal also allows you to refuel your grill without being exposed to excessive smoking and unpleasant smells. Additionally, the pure wood composition of lump charcoal opens the door for a wider variety of regional-specific flavors like pecan, hickory, oak, and apple.
Charcoal Briquettes
)
This kind of charcoal is typically made using a combination of sawdust, coal dust, binders to maintain shape, and other fillers. Because of their makeup, briquettes are a cheap and easy way to light a charcoal grill. Match light charcoal, meanwhile, is a certain type of briquette that has been saturated with lighter fluid so the fire will be easier to start. We don’t recommend match light briquettes (or ever using lighter fluid on any kind of charcoal) because the gas used in the fluid tends to create a chemical aftertaste in food.
Briquette charcoal is usually rated to keep a consistent “broiling” temperature around 600 degrees Fahrenheit, making it a solid choice for grilling just about any type of food. When it comes to flavor, the variety of woods (hickory, mesquite, etc.) used to make briquettes provide subtle differences to complement the classic charcoal taste. However, briquettes also leave behind a good bit of messy ash that will need to be cleaned.
View on BBQGuys.com
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.