You’re Probably Using the Wrong Charcoal

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00][music] >> I don't think most people think enough about the charcoal they use to burn when they're having a barbecue.

[00:00:12]So for me, my charcoal is my number one ingredient in fire cooking.

[00:00:17]Um if you open a bag of charcoal and it smells of more than precisely nothing, there will be something in that charcoal that isn't charcoal.

[00:00:31]So to make charcoal, you take a tree, take wood, and you burn that wood it under very specific um conditions without oxygen, and that drives off everything in the wood that isn't carbon.

[00:00:49]Now carbon is a completely inert molecule.

[00:00:55]It should have no smell, no taste, give you no smoke, and no flavor. You know, carbon is inert. So if you open a bag of charcoal and it smells of more than nothing, there'll be something in there that isn't carbon.

[00:01:10]So why are there additives in your charcoal?

[00:01:15]Well, charcoal is a highly flammable substance.

[00:01:20]We know that. That's why we burn it to have a barbecue after work on a beautiful sunny day. Um but if your charcoal is traveling a long distance, and very often charcoal travels a very long distance, thousands of miles from uh places where they make charcoal, uh you have to negate any chance that it's going to catch fire to itself when it's on its long journey, for example, across the Atlantic Ocean from South America.

[00:01:50]So it often gets sprayed with fire suppressant chemicals, so it can't catch fire to itself on its long journey here.

[00:01:59]Then it would get sprayed with fire accelerant chemicals, so that we can set fire to it after work on a beautiful sunny day.

[00:02:08]That is why your charcoal smells.

[00:02:10]Which leads me quite nicely into the biggest myth perpetuated about using charcoal.

[00:02:19]You will have heard this one without a doubt.

[00:02:22]You have to wait for your charcoal to be white and ashy before you can start cooking on it. Yeah, you heard that myth?

[00:02:30]I bet you have. Um purely invented for charcoal that has chemical additives because you have to burn off those additives before the charcoal becomes palatable or safe to cook on, because you don't want those additives in your food. So with very good pure charcoal that is a pure carbon product, there's no waiting around waiting for white and ashy.

[00:02:58]You light it, and as soon as the fire is stable, you can start cooking.

[00:03:05]Doesn't have to be white and ashy. In fact, I would encourage you not to wait for that, because what you're doing is wasting heat energy. So if you imagine a volume of charcoal, small chimney, large chimney, if you imagine that volume of charcoal contains the certain potential for energy, it's got energy stored within it.

[00:03:29]And what we're doing when we're setting light to it is releasing that energy.

[00:03:34]So something that's got twice as much volume will have twice as much energy.

[00:03:41]So the way we release the energy is up to us as the cooks.

[00:03:46]So people think you control your fire with the fuel, but the reality is you control the heat of your fire with oxygen, with air flow. Uh and if you have a lit fire and you increase the air flow, you're going to burn through that energy quicker. It's like having a battery pack, and you plug several things into that battery, the energy's going to go quicker. If you put more air into the fire, you're going to expend that energy quicker than if you shut the air down, reduce the air flow, you're going to slow down the burn of that fire, and release that energy more slowly.

[00:04:32]So if you've ever had a fire that feels irritatingly sluggish or burning way too hot, it's not to do with the charcoal, it's to do with the air flow.

[00:04:48]If you've got good pure charcoal, because with a very good pure carbon product that doesn't smell of anything, what you get is supreme control of that air flow, and that gives you, the cook, supreme control over the rate the fire burns, the temperature, the way you release the energy contained within that fire. So I only burn sustainable British charcoal.

[00:05:17]It's just the line in the sand that I've drawn for myself. Um and I would encourage people to investigate charcoals in the country that they come from.

[00:05:30]Uh local sustainable charcoals, making charcoal can be a very positive act for the environment, for the woodland, uh in terms of managing a forest, and um therefore managing the wildlife and encouraging biodiversity in a woodland, it can be a very good positive thing that you do, buying sustainable charcoal from the country that you live in. But over and above the kind of environmental considerations, with pure charcoal you get this supremely controllable, predictable fire.

[00:06:08]And having a controllable, predictable fire is actually what makes fire cooking easy. It's not about how expensive your steak is, or how fancy your equipment is.

[00:06:21]It's about having good pure fuel to give you a good pure heat source, and that's it.

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