Lesson 8: Lump vs. Briquette Charcoal

Whether you’re already an accomplished griller or just a novice, grilling cookbook author Fred Thompson will turn you into a grill master in ten short episodes.

Grilling with charcoal used to mean one thing–briquettes. But lately lump charcoal has become the darling of everyone who’s serious about grilling. It has a lot of advantages–it burns hotter and cleaner–but it requires a little more know-how to cook over lump charcoal than briquettes. This episode explains the difference between the two types of charcoal, and gives you tips for working with both.

New England Clambake		Maple-Brined, Wood-Smoked Grilled Turkey		Hoisin Barbecued Ribs

Briquettes
Briquettes consist of pulverized charcoal, bound together with cornstarch and other fillers, depending on the brand. Their standard size, shape, and composition makes them burn very steadily and reliably: A batch of 45 briquettes will give you consistent heat for 1 hour.

When you shop for charcoal briquettes, look for solid hardwood charcoal briquettes, which have less in the way of fillers, and burn cleaner and hotter. Definitely avoid any of the briquettes impregnated with lighter fluid, unless you like the taste of that stuff in your food. And of course, if you use a chimney charcoal starter (see episode 3 for how-to details), you can skip the lighter fluid entirely.

Lump Charcoal
Serious grillers these days have gone to using hardwood lump charcoal–it is just what it sounds like: pieces of hardwood, with no additives, that have been charred into lumps of charcoal. It burns hotter and cleaner than briquettes, but the heat is variable and not as consistent, so it requires a little more experience managing your fire to get good results in cooking.

Lump charcoal burns hotter than briquettes. A briquette fire can get up to 800 to 100 degrees, while lump can get up to 1400° F. Depending on what you’re cooking, this can either be an advantage or something you need to work around.

If you’re cooking something like steaks or tuna steaks–things that you want to have a great sear on the outside and a rare or medium-rare center–that high heat is perfect. In this case, make sure that when you hold your hand about a foot above the fire, you can hold it there for 1 to 2 seconds before you have to pull it away.

But if you’re doing pork chops, or chicken, something you want cooked all the way through, you’ll want to let the fire die down until you can hold your hand there for 3 to 4 seconds. To help bring the fire down a little cooler, close the top and bottom vents on your grill slightly, which feeds less air into the fire.

Time palm can be held over grill	Grill heat	Temperature range
less than 1 second	very hot	over 600°F
1 to 2 seconds	hot	400° to 500°F
3 to 4 seconds	medium	350° to 375°F
5 to 7 seconds	medium-low	325° to 350°F

When Fred works with lump charcoal, he tends to use a combination cooking method, even for items I’d normally cook over direct heat only (such as steaks): Set up a two-zone fire, and after an initial sear in the hot zone, move it over to a cooler area of the grill to finish the cooking.

When you open up a bag of lump charcoal, you’ll find a huge variety in the sizes of chunks–some brands are more consistent than others, but they’re all less consistent than briquettes. Because of this variation in size, the burn time of lump charcoal varies a lot. It’s not necessarily a shorter or longer burn time than briquettes, it just depends.

So the best way to tend your lump charcoal fire for a longer period of time is to find a brand you like and stick with it (for exhaustive reviews of many different brands of lump charcoal, check out the web site www.nakedwhiz.com/lump.htm). Always use a grill thermometer to monitor your temperature, and always have a second batch of coals getting ready to replenish the first.

One way to get some of the benefits of lump charcoal without the drawbacks is to build a mixed fire: some briquettes, and some lump. This will help you get a hotter fire for searing, but it will maintain more consistent heat for longer-cooking items.

More Charcoal Grilling Recipes
Mexican Grilled Chuck Steaks
Master Barbecued Chicken Recipe
Apple-Bacon Barbecued Ribs

Related Articles
How to Judge the Temperature of Your Charcoal Grill
Hardwood Charcoal vs. Briquettes
The ABCs of Grilling Gear
Becoming an Expert Griller

Lesson 1: The Perfect Burger		Lesson 2: Great Steaks on the Grill		Lesson 3: How to Start a Charcoal Fire

Lesson 4: The Two-Zone Fire		Lesson 5: How to Grill Bone-In Chicken Parts		Lesson 6: How to Add Smoke to a Gas Grill

Lesson 7: How to Grill Fish		Lesson 8: Lump vs. Briquette Charcoal		Lesson 9: Slow-Smoked Pork Shoulder

Lesson 10: Real Barbecued Ribs