AZ Barbeque.com
BBQ Related Topics => BBQ Fuel Discussions - Charcoal, Lump, Pellets, Wood & Gas => Topic started by: bearbonez on February 29, 2008, 08:21:22 am
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Does anyone know if HD is carrying that good and cheap charcoal this year (rancher's reserve?). Ours had it for about 2 weeks and was gone. Wondering if it would do any good to bug them about it. Up on the hill we have kingsford, cowboy lump, or RO. I like RO enough, but wally world seems to carry it periodically and at $5 for the small bag.
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I was at Home Depot yesterday and saw a pallet of (gulp) Cowboy lump charcoal. That stuff is far and away the worst lump charcoal I have ever had the displeasure of opening.
I, too, hope that HD will carry Rancher charcoal again this year. My 50 bag stockpile is beginning to dwindle to a mere 35 bags.
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Is charcoal your guys primary use for heat and smoking? Or do you supplement your charcoal with hardwoods to "flavor". I am just curious what others are doing out there. Also, do you have large smokers, i.e. on a trailer, or do you have the smaller ones that are on your porch? And I haven't seen this charcoal up here, but I am in Flagstaff, so that probly isn't much help.
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I use charcoal for heat and add wood for flavoring.....and I used my last bag of Rancher yesterday :(
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My smoker is a backyard classic chef from gator pits. It's really a stick burner, but I made a charcoal basket that i use charcoal and wood chunks for overnight cooking...till I can get a WSM. It's not a trailered cooker, but it's pretty big. I can cook 2 briskets, 2 pork butts, 4 whole chickens, and 24 slabs of spares at once on it.
Looking in the future to have a few WSM's for comps and overnight cooks at home.
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I have (and sell) the big trailer smokers. I use a combination of wood and lump when I first start it up, but as I'm cooking through the night, I use mainly wood. If I need to get more heat in the chamber, I will add some lump, but mostly we just use wood through the cook.
Now as far as what type of wood, right now we are using pecan & almond, but grape, apple, olive and cherry are all good to use, but hard to find.
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Is charcoal your guys primary use for heat and smoking? Or do you supplement your charcoal with hardwoods to "flavor". I am just curious what others are doing out there. Also, do you have large smokers, i.e. on a trailer, or do you have the smaller ones that are on your porch? And I haven't seen this charcoal up here, but I am in Flagstaff, so that probly isn't much help.
I have a pit on wheels. I'll generally drop a 20 lb bag of Kingsford in my pit to get it started, and shortly after throw on wood. I use Kingsford, but that's because I can't seem to find the Rancher brand up north either. Also, I've kind of turned away from using the lump on my big pit, because it seems like a good 20-30% of the bottom of the bag ends up being small pieces or dust that just fall through the grate anyway. The Kingsford or Rancher also seem to allow much slower/even burn temps (at least on the low side) for long cooks on my pit. But, because of the much higher temps and better flavor, I only use lump when grilling steaks etc. over direct flame.