there always seems to be talk about what's teh best rub or marinade. but the type of charcoal used is overlooked. i think how hot and long the charcoal burns is as important to the taste as what's put on the food...not to mention some soaked wood chips for the smokey flavor. what brand of charcoal do you find is best?
I like any plain charcoal that is not self-starting, and when I light it, I use as little starter fluid as I can. I find that Kingsford is soaked in too much starter fluid. I use either Royal Oak or whatever grocery store brand there is, but the plain stuff. I usually don't grill on charcoal anymore (I smoke with my charcoal smoker and grill on my gas grill), but when I did, I let it burn down for 30 minutes until charcoal was all gray, then toss two handfuls of mesquite chips on that had been soaking in water for 30 minutes.
Don't use charcoal brickettes. Go buy lump charcoal. It burns longer and hotter, so you use less. And no glue to mess up the taste of the food
Forget about lighter fluid and get yourself a nice chimney. The key to charcoal grilling is getting the coals lit properly.
all-wood charcoal. You can get this at Wholefoods now. You'll want to throw in some raw pecan wood or whatever, for flavor, but use natural charcoal as the base fuel. of course the best thing to do is store some pecan logs and burn it black in a weber, yourself, to make your own lump charcoal prior to cooking with it. That's a chore though.
this is what I use I put just one chimney full(just regular generic charcoal) in and let it burn down for a while, then put it in my firebox and add several pieces of red oak. after that catches good, and the original briquets are all ash...then I add a couple pieces of pecan and then close everything up and stabilize the temp to what ever I need. then add meat. doing it that way ensures all charcoal additives have burnt off and you got nothing but wood fire/smoke going.
you load it up from the top with charcoal, then stuff paper under the recessed bottom and light it. the paper burns and in the process catches the charcoal on fire naturally. let it burn till you got grey ash covering at least half of your visible briquets. then dump it in and add wood. We all know they add stuff to the charcoal, doing it this way keeps you from having to add more crap(lighter fluid) to them
I've been grilling a lot with wood lately and was wondering - is there a cancer risk to doing this too often? Or is that not something to be worrying about.
