I’m just thinking of the concerns over monitoring whether the charcoal was still doing its thing, needed to be replenished, etc. Doing it on a gas grill (with chips for smoke) was just so much more hands-off, the times I tried it.
Now you all are making me want to try to fix our gas grill. It quit working once, a few years back, and we basically partially assembled / disassembled it and that fixed it. It quit again a couple years later, and we just haven’t had the energy to deal with it.
After the first smoked-chicken near-fiasco, I did invest in a remote thermometer - it had a wire that went out under the edge of the unit, so I could check the bird’s temperature w/o needing to lift the lid / lose the smoke / lose the heat. I’d definitely recommend something like that, regardless of one’s fuel source, if you’re going to be doing longer cooking dishes.
With the equipment and processes I’ve standardized on, it doesn’t require helicopter parenting. Just the awareness of the passing of time (because, for instance, a particular charge of smokewood will take a known amount of time to burn out).
For large or time-consuming projects, I use a remote-read thermometer to monitor both air temperature in the vicinity of the food, and food temperature itself. But they’re mostly for assurance that nothing unexpected is going on.
Count me solidly in the gas grill camp. I’ve cooked with Weber kettles for decades. They work just fine. But my Char-Broil gas grill has a side burner for heating sauces and such, and plenty of room on the other side for drinkage. Nothing beats grilling with 5 minutes prep, and even less close-down.
One of my best friends, OTOH, swears by his Big Green Egg, and I must admit he works magic with it.
I have a propane grill, a charcoal grill, and a smoker. In fact, I just smoked a couple racks of ribs and some hotlinks yesterday. I agree that for what I associate as a “grilled” flavor, it’s the fat in the fire and not so much charcoal. I don’t find charcoal to be particularly smoky in flavor. Most of that smoke flavor has been burnt out. I’ve done smokes on only charcoal and … it ain’t smoky. I mean, there’s a hint of a wood flavor in there, I suppose, but I can’t really detect it. Perhaps it’s because I know what it tastes like when there’s some smoking wood in there in addition to the charcoal.
I love my gas Weber and there’s no way I’ll ever be converted, but I’ll admit that charcoal has one advantage – all you have to do for fuel is keep stocked up on charcoal briquettes and whatever you use for lighting. Whereas hauling a propane tank for a refill is a royal PITA – and tank exchange is no easier and doesn’t work for me anyway because I have a special tank with a propane gauge. Which now that I think of it may not be a pressure gauge at all but a floater-based liquid propane level gauge, which may explain why it reads “Empty” well before the propane runs out – maybe the liquid propane is all gone but there’s lots of pressurized propane left in the tank.
Meanwhile I just had the horrible thought that my nice gauge-equipped tank may be very near or past its 10-year expiry date!
The ideal solution would be a grill connected to a home’s natural gas supply. Quite costly to set up, though, and the grill itself has to be retrofitted for natural gas.
Yeah, that was always my suspicion. I don’t doubt that many folks have had great results with their charcoal grills, but I don’t think it’s the smokiness of the charcoal itself, per se. Hot charcoal probably produces a nice sear and nice smoke from the drippings.
You know that Sesame Street song about how one thing is not like the others? That applies here. Despite all 3 being 22" Weber grills they are not the same machine. Note how the first grill has a rather shallow profile. That means that 1) air won’t be able to flow well under the charcoal and 2) the coals will be waaay too close to the grilling surface. This will make temperature control difficult and, even if you get the coals burning well, will give you uneven heat across the grill. Even basic cooking tasks like warming up hot dogs it will not end well. Avoid this model at all costs.
The second grill is much deeper and has good airflow and room for the charcoal. This is the classic, OG Weber design. It is is a good grill with one big caveat: the ash catcher underneath sucks mightily and makes even a short cook potentially dangerous – there’s nothing to actually contain the hot ashes. I bought one of these on sale and almost burned my house down when a stray ember fell out of the bottom of the grill and rolled off of the ash pan into some dry grass at the edge of my patio. I immediately ordered the ash basket that comes standard on the third model I linked to. It’s now safe to use although it ended up costing me more money than if I had bought the premium model to begin with.
So my recommendation is to get the third model, the one with the contained ash receptacle. It is much, much safer and well worth the extra money.
Yeah, I’ve got a little Weber Smokey Joe (?- I think that’s what it was called) that I bought in 1998, and it’s still fine. I’ve had to replace the lower grate because it eventually disintegrated, and the wooden handle has seen better days, but the body and other hardware are humming right along.
I’ve bounced around the idea of getting a larger charcoal grill because for things like steaks and fajitas, it just does better than a gas grill. (and I’ve got a good one- a Napoleon Rogue 425 with the IR burner), and between everything I’ve read and my personal experience with Weber charcoal grills, I’m pretty sure that it’ll be a Weber when and if I pull the trigger on one.
Ha! Making my own charcoal is one thing I haven’t tried, though I’ve burned hardwood and cooked over the embers, like some BBQ joints do.
I’m not crazy about the fancy lump charcoal, which is what I’d get if I actually did make my own. My go-to is Kingsford brand charcoal with chunks of wood added for smoky flavor. Good quality briquet charcoal burns evenly and long, and the uniform size makes it much easier to work with.
My brother in law is heavily into smoking. I jokingly told him he should make his own charcoal, and in response he showed me his sooper-secret wood supply.
Last night they had ribs for dinner, but that meant waking up early to start the process.
Do you cook that ‘impossible meat’ on your grill over that ‘impossible charcoal’? Real charcoal is harder to light because it’s better. Real charcoal grilling uses real charcoal unless you’re in hurry or they ran out of lump at the store or your wife bought a bag of briquets and you might as well use them for reasons.
Keep in mind that cheaper grills will generally rust out sooner and may not cook as well. The better grills will generally have thicker steel and better coatings which allow them to last much longer. And the thicker steel means they can hold the heat better and reach higher temps.
Whoah, you’re lucky to have gotten a look at his sooper-secret supply, and he didn’t have to kill you afterward
I’ve cooked using nothing but hardwood, I’ve used lump charcoal, I’ve tried it all. Lump charcoal is wildly different in the size of its pieces, and it burns too quickly for my liking. Good quality briquet charcoal, as I said, burns long, evenly and predictably. I always use chunks of real wood along with the briquets for flavor, and I, and I don’t think anybody else, could tell a difference in flavor between my BBQ and something cooked exclusively on lump coal. Lump charcoal is probably fine grilling something that doesn’t take long, but try doing a 13 hour slow smoke of a pork butt or brisket using lump charcoal. You could probably do it, but you’d be awful busy constantly adding new coals and likely go through $$$ of it.
I have. You just need a better smoker or more patience. Briquets are made of ground up softwood and binders, and sometimes carcinogenic crap to make them start faster. And it’s not the good tasting carcinogenic crap that was in cigarettes either. But expediency is still a good enough reason to use briquets.
Well, the debate over briquet vs. lump is probably as vigorous as that of gas vs. charcoal. Plenty of grill masters use a mix of briquets and wood chunks. Not that I’m a grill master, but false modesty aside, I’m a pretty darn good amateur. When I use briquets, I only use Kingsford brand original, which I don’t think has any additives that are any more carcinogenic than cooking food over smoky burning wood already is.
But hey, I’m open-minded, and I was curious as to what other Doper BBQers thought, so I started a poll thread:
First of all, I’m talking about the quick lighting stuff. Second of all, can’t you tell the difference between a rant and a well reasoned argument?
Since you’ve disallowed the gotcha of smoke being carcinogenic anyway I have no cite except the claims by lump charcoal advocates and producers. Regulations may have ended the use of awful smelling lighter fluid type stuff they used to contain but I’m not gonna use the stuff out of principle. I’m not sure what that principle is but I’m sticking to it.
Why not? I use charcoal solely to get my grill/smoker started, then it’s natural wood (usually maple, sometimes alder or oak, if I have it) from there on out. Only exception is if I am grilling something quick and easy - steaks, burgers, etc. - then it’s mostly charcoal with some smaller pieces of wood tossed on for flavor.
As far as the low-and-slow, I have a double advantage. My grill is 5 feet long. I typically build the fire at one end, and vary the placement of the grilled/smoked item as required. When I finish building this grill, it will also have a remote firebox that just ducts smoke into the grill area, so I can cold-smoke things such as salmon, bacon, hams, etc. My last grill had that, just haven’t gotten it installed on the new one yet.
