Charcoal v heat beads

[Truman]

Hi All

I'm interested in picking up some charcoal (the closest to me is actually the Heston stuff made for his Everdure BBQ range - HUB and Fusion) to use in the Weber kettle instead of heat beads. Can you use the charcoal in the heat bead chimney and air blaster thing (as I want to move away from using fire starters)?

Also, I've never used wood chips ... is there a standout favourite I should try first? And are they useful for steaks, or primarily longer cook low and slow meats? (Though I might roast a chook on the weekend too.)

Cheers guys.
Truman

[Davo]

Hi Truman,

Do you have a Bunnings within easy reach, they have a range of lump charcoal to try.

But for a Weber Kettle, Heatbeads are pretty good.

Woodchips come in many flavours, hickory, mesquite, apple, etc, the fruitwood chips are great for Chicken and pork.

First soak them for an hour or two, loosley wrap in foil then poke a few holes in the foil and chuck ontop of the fire, when they start to smoulder, they will emit their woody flavours. Meat will generally only soak up to 3 hours of smoke....so wood chunk are my favourite for this. You can also try woodpellets but you don't soak them, just wrap in foil and poke holes in foil...that's the basics of having some smoke flavour.
Most if not all charcoal can be pre-lit in a chimney starter....however you can use some newspaper doused in cooking oil under the chimney if you don't want to use firelighters but i've been using firelighters for many years and have never got any foul tasting residue from them whatsoever...it's all burnt off by the time you put your food on the grill.

Cheers

Davo

[Jimmyj]

Good Morning Truman
My understanding is that you can use a mixture of charcoal and heat-beads in a weber, I accidentally overheard this conversation at BBQG the other day and the person said he uses a ratio of 2 lots of Charcoal to one lot of heat-beads. I have to try that out one day.

Personally I use two methods of lighting my charcoal in a chimney
I sit my chimney starter with charcoal on the side burner of my gas BBQ and wait a few minutes until charcoal is alight and move the chimney to the kamado and let the flames take hold whilst in the chimney. The other is I partially soak old vegetable oil in a paper towel and place that among the charcoal and let that do its thing. To this day I have not used fire starters due to hearing about taste of Kero and other stuff in the food

Hope this helps in some way

Jim

[Davo]

Been using firestarters for years with no such taste...yeah it smells bad when you first light it up but providing you allow the coals to ash up white before you place the food on the grill, all evidence of kero is totally burnt off.

Yep...you can use a mixture of coals and charcoal, the charcaol will provide the initial high heat whereas the heatbeads will keep the heat a bit longer the finish up the cook...not bad insurance.

Cheers

Davo

[Truman]

Thanks guys. A few good tips there.

[Mr Peter]

...I sit my chimney starter with charcoal on the side burner of my gas BBQ and wait a few minutes until charcoal is alight and move the chimney to the kamado and let the flames take hold whilst in the chimney. The other is I partially soak old vegetable oil in a paper towel and place that among the charcoal and let that do its thing...

You can also use regular kindling (ie some paper & softwood, or twigs, or whatever) to light a chimney.

But the most surprising way? A few corn chips. Yes, Doritos or CC's. I attempted this at first with some skepticism, but it really does work. They have enough carbohydrate and oils to burn long enough to get the chimney started. I found this a very handy trick once at a mate's place when he had a bag of heat beads but no normal way of lighting them...

[Davo]

...I sit my chimney starter with charcoal on the side burner of my gas BBQ and wait a few minutes until charcoal is alight and move the chimney to the kamado and let the flames take hold whilst in the chimney. The other is I partially soak old vegetable oil in a paper towel and place that among the charcoal and let that do its thing...

You can also use regular kindling (ie some paper & softwood, or twigs, or whatever) to light a chimney.

But the most surprising way? A few corn chips. Yes, Doritos or CC's. I attempted this at first with some skepticism, but it really does work. They have enough carbohydrate and oils to burn long enough to get the chimney started. I found this a very handy trick once at a mate's place when he had a bag of heat beads but no normal way of lighting them...

Yeah? hahaha well I'll be....hot corn chips...that is the very first i've heard of that too....probably makes you more aware how much oil we're consuming when we eat them. Now you know I've gotta give that a try one day if I can get the corn chips away from the Mrs but thanks for that interesting peice of info...you see...an old dog can learn new tricks