While charcoal usually takes 20-25 minutes to heat to the right temperature, wood takes much longer. Wood can also burn faster, so you’ll need to add more wood chips more frequently than charcoal. ![]() Too much smoke and your food will taste like wood. With wood, you’ll need to stay on top of your grill to monitor smoke levels. Wood, as long as it’s been seasoned properly, is chemical-free, making your food much safer to eat with a rich flavor from natural ingredients that are not compromised. You don’t need to worry about artificial additives, such as the ones found in charcoal briquettes. Wood smoke naturally has over a thousand compounds that produce flavor. Using the right kind of wood for grilling can give you so many more flavors than charcoal. When you cook with wood, you introduce a completely different flavor profile to your foods compared to charcoal. Grilling with Wood: Advantages and Disadvantages And if you use lighter fluid, that’s introducing even more chemicals into your food. With charcoal briquettes, you’ll experience more chemicals in your food, impacting its overall flavor. For those who want to mix things up a bit, wood grilling might be the way to go.Ĭhemicals. And while it can be delicious, it can also be a bit boring experiencing the same flavor cook after cook. You get one flavor-charcoal with charcoal. One flavor option, and one flavor option only. Plus, cleaning a grill full of charcoal ashes is no walk in the park either. It’s about as messy as grilling fuel gets. While charcoal does sound like a better option than wood, there are a few drawbacks. It also cooks your food much faster since it burns hotter. Charcoal takes a shorter amount of time to attain the correct temperature, about 20-25 minutes on average. It also helps your meat remain juicy and tender and not get burned. This is helpful when grilling large cuts that you need to cook longer. You can create zones of direct and indirect heat with charcoal. And since it’s pure carbon, cooking with charcoal is actually more eco-friendly and cleaner.Įasier to control. You can pick up a 20-pound bag of briquettes for about $18 to $20.Īlso, since it burns longer, a little goes a much longer way than is the case with wood. Charcoal is also cheaper than wood for grilling. Since charcoal doesn’t combust and burns hotter for longer, it is much easier to manage the right temperatures you need for grilling meats such as tender, juicy steaks that have those deliciously crunchy sear marks that everyone loves on meats.Ĭleaner and more affordable. Whenever meat drips onto charcoal while grilling, the juice sizzles and releases special steam that infuses the meat with an amazing char-grill flavor you cannot replicate using other methods. Here are a few advantages to grilling with charcoal.Ĭhar-grill flavor. However, the temperature drops after a while, making them suitable for fast grilling over direct heat and less so for lo’ and slo’ grilling over indirect heat. They burn very cleanly, don’t produce as much ash, and get hot very quickly. Charcoal LumpsĬharcoal lumps are simply uneven pieces of burned wood. They also take longer than charcoal lumps to get up to cooking temperature. On the flip side, charcoal briquettes, especially those with petroleum-based binders, give off pretty unpleasant smoke during the initial burn. They’re shaped evenly, so they keep a steady grilling temperature. Charcoal BriquettesĬharcoal briquettes are made from a combination of coal dust, sawdust, wood chips, pulp, peat, borax, and binders (petroleum- or starch-based). The most common forms of charcoal include charcoal briquettes and charcoal lumps. ![]() It’s pre-burned in a low-oxygen environment until it becomes pure carbon. ![]() Grilling with Charcoal: Advantages and Disadvantagesĭid you know that you’re already grilling with wood if you’re using charcoal? That’s because charcoal is wood. Keep reading, and you will learn the answer to those questions-and many more. And there’s more than one merit of doing so, from cleaner burn to tastier meat.īut, what are the advantages and disadvantages of using wood versus using coal? What are the best types of wood to grill with? And, how do you go about grilling with wood? Yes, it is entirely possible to grill with wood instead of charcoal. But long before charcoal came along, cooks were using wood to grill over an open campfire. Maybe you’ve even thought about it yourself, and you came here wondering whether or not it’s a good idea.įor many grillers who use charcoal, it’s hard to imagine using anything else. ![]() You were grilling in the park, looked over, and noticed someone throwing logs instead of coals into their kettle.
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