Uber Noob Charcoal Grilling questions

Turkeyfoot Jr. said:

I should point out that when I say "longer" I mean 5-6 hours tops. My grill is a Weber kettle, the 22" variety, so I'm not trying to do any Boston butts or anything along those lines. But I can get 5-6 hours at 200-300 without too much tinkering and without adding charcoal.
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Just start your butt on the weber, smoke it for 4 to 6 hours, then put it in the oven to finish. I do that to not have to tend my smoker overnight, as I do not have a great one. Still get good smoke flavor and a perfect butt. Just slap a digital probe thermometer in it and pull it at 200ish (I like nothing over 204). Usually I run 12 to 14 hours for 8 lb butts.

I tend to twist up my newspaper for my chimney starter and have on had one instance where it burnt out before it got the lump charcoal going....

+1 on the sorting... That is a trick that they recommend on the Naked Whiz...... Honestly, I am too lazy to do it myself... I am sure when I finally get around to making my charcoal deck box I will start to do a little more work....

Maybe I'm too far north, or just looking in the wrong places, but the only lump charcoal that I've been able to find is the Cowboy stuff. After reading about the Royal Oak stuff, I went on a tour of all the Walmarts in the area and didn't find it.

I've been using Stubb's briquettes, which claim to be 100% natural. They don't smell as bad as kingsford while lighting.

mr_goodwrench said:

While I was cleaning out the garage, I came across a propane dual burner cooktop from Harbor Freight that I bought for camping but never really used. So I hooked it up to my propane tank(that up until now I only owned for brewing...) and put the chimney on it. I ran the burner for about a minute and then shut it off and a couple minutes later, the charcoal was ready to dump. No newspaper!

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I just tried that this weekend with the side burner of my propane grill. It worked great. Started faster, and no newspaper ash. Now I wonder how it would work if I put my chimney on top of my turkey fryer burner!

All ya need is some Kingsford Matchlight charcoal and a lighter and you are good to go.

lustreking said:

Maybe I'm too far north, or just looking in the wrong places, but the only lump charcoal that I've been able to find is the Cowboy stuff. After reading about the Royal Oak stuff, I went on a tour of all the Walmarts in the area and didn't find it.

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I get it from Menard's, if you have those in your neck of the woods you can check there.

kanielb1 said:

All ya need is some Kingsford Matchlight charcoal and a lighter and you are good to go.

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Matchlight is nasty. Get a chimney.