Lump Charcoal vs. Charcoal Briquettes

Video

Get the most out of your grill—including that authentic barbecue flavor—by watching this video. You’ll learn everything from safely lighting briquettes to cooking with direct and indirect heat.

Lesson

Charcoal is made by burning wood in the absence of oxygen and is preferred by many barbecue cooks today because of its relative purity.

Lump charcoal has a lot of redeeming qualities: it lights faster, burns hotter, and leaves very little ash compared to the somewhat more popular charcoal briquettes. Lump charcoal is also more responsive to oxygen, making it easier to control the fire’s temperature if your barbecue grill has adjustable air vents. It is, however, usually more expensive than briquettes. Bags of the lump variety contain greatly unequal size, with some chunks the size of tiny pebbles, and some the size of your fist.

Do not use liquid charcoal lighter fluid to ignite your briquettes or lump charcoal. Instead use paraffin starter blocks, electric starters, propane starters, gas torches, or metal chimney starters and newspaper. See our lesson on Lighting a Charcoal grill.

Our recommendation: use lump charcoal, and if you can find them, organic briquettes.

Briquettes

Charcoal briquettes are cheap, standard and uniform in size, and can be found almost everywhere. They provide a more stable ignition and burn rate, are easier to control, maintain a fairly steady temperature for a long period of time, and usually have fewer hot spots than lump charcoal.

Briquettes, however, can be made of some questionable ingredients. You’ve probably noticed the chemical smell when you first light most briquettes. That’s because some have charcoal lighter fluid added to make them light quickly. Charcoal lighter fluid is a highly flammable, toxic chemical. As such, we are cautioned to let the charcoal burn for a while before cooking over the briquettes.

One of the primary ingredients, known as char, is basically traditional charcoal. It’s responsible for the briquette’s ability to light easily and produce a wood-smoke flavor. To create this flavor, manufacturers use hardwoods (the best for grillin’) like oak, hard maple, or hickory, softwoods like pine, or other organic materials like dried fruit pits and various nut shells.

The other primary ingredient: coal. Various types of coal may be used, ranging from anthracite to sub-bituminous lignite. But it’s still tar- and soot-producing coal.

Minor ingredients include a binding agent (typically vegetable or grain starches), an accelerant (like nitrates), and an ash-whitening agent (borax or lime), which is added to indicate when the briquettes are ready to cook on. Briquettes can produce too much ash, blocking air vents. If you use briquettes, scrape out your air vents regularly.

Greener briquettes

There are some new charcoal bricks and briquettes that are made purely from organic compounds, emit fewer toxic chemicals than the treated briquettes, and produce less ash than their predecessors. If you like briquettes, we recommend looking for these.