Over the weekend, I attempted to grill something. Usually, this is kind of a no-brainer, but I had run out of charcoal and decided to try some hardwood charcoal. I never used hardwood charcoal, but how different could it be?
The first thing I did was light the charcoal in a chimney starter. I didn't read the instructions on the bag, of course. Hey, I'm an engineer, we never read instructions, we just get mad at other people for not reading them. So after about 20 minutes the charcoal is red-hot. Success! Or so I thought. But wait, should I wait for it to ash over? Did hardwood charcoal do that? I wasn't sure, so I let it sit there for another ten minutes, after which it didn't seem to ash over at all. OK, well enough is enough, I dump the charcoal into the barbecue pit. After I clean the grating, I put the chicken on, put the grill cover on, and come back in 15 minutes to test it. The grill is cold. What the fuck?
So I put another batch of charcoal in my chimney starter and light it. This time I read the instructions. It says 10 minutes should be enough for them to get red-hot, and after they get red-hot, put them in. Seems simple enough. But after 10 minutes, they were not red hot. They did have plenty of smoke though, so after a few minutes more, I decided to just dump it in my barbecue pit. I put the chicken back on, and the cover back on, and for the next 30 minutes, smoke pours of my grill. Looks goods. And it was good, the chicken was in fact cooked in that time. But at the end of it, smoke stopped coming, and the grill cooled down rapidly.
The next day, there was still much whole charcoal in my grill. I probably can just re-use it. But I'm still puzzled about the properties of hardwood charcoal. Supposedly it's faster burning, and hotter than the charcoal briquettes, but that doesn't explain how charcoal can go from red-hot to no heat in a ventilated barbecue pit in just a few minutes. Personally, I blame this whole thing on George W. Bush.
Posted by ahyatt at August 19, 2003 07:59 AMWhile blaming Bush is usually the thing to do in this situation, I'm not sure it will help your cooking. I've had much success with (and have come to prefer) hardwood charcoal, but I notice its ready to cook with sooner than bricks and cools down faster under a lidded Weber. Thus I tend to lift the lid alot and blow on the flames to keep them fairly hot.. though the relatively low heat is what I like about hardwood, makes for easier slow cooking without worrying about burning, drying out or charring. It does very well in open cooking (without the lid for smoking), without getting to the (overly, imo) intense heat of bricks. Yes there tends to be some leftover; I've never had enough of that to consider cooking with the remainders, but I guess it could be done.
Posted by: DK on August 17, 2004 07:27 AMHardwood charcoal requires more ventilation than briquets to burn completelly. It does require more lump charcoal than briquets to get the same long term heat effect.
I have tried a new briquet produced by Duraflame which does not have all the strange ingredients such as mineral coal (sometimes they mix up to 60% mineral coal in the briquets made in the U.S.), fly ash, sand and so on. It is all natural charcoal and does burn much better and longer. You should try it.