Briquettes and wood


 
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Brady ATX

New member
What is a good charcoal brand to get. Lowes has a good deal on Kingsford right now. They also have a special on hickory and apple wood.
Thoughts on above mentioned or any other recommendations?
 
Compared to my local Lowes & Home Depot, Wally World has much better prices on wood chunks. YMMV there. But definitely watch Lowes & Home Depot for serious deals on Kingsford around Memorial Day, The 4th of July and Labor Day when it ends up being around 25 cents/lb.
 
A little late to the party, but what MacGreggor said. They usually have the twin 20lb packs for around $9.99. I was only able to get 240lbs last sale, hope that holds me until Memorial Day.
 
On my WSM I always use kingsford blue bag. Like others have mentioned very easy to manage a steady consistent temp. For wood it depends what I am cooking. With beef l like pecan or oak. You being in Austin Post Oak is very popular. For chicken I like to use apple. In my opinion I really don't like a heavy heavy smoke flavor. I normally use 1 or maybe 2 chunks per cook. Some people love the heavy smoke and put a lot more wood then that. You need to experiment and see what taste is best to you!
 
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KBB, and hickory and apple wood for smoke. My wife really liked the last pork butt I smoked - I used only apple wood with the Kingsford and subbed pineapple juice for the usual apple juice in the foil pan the butt sits over. The drippings and pineapple juice work great together!
 
Mike Willis said:
KBB, and hickory and apple wood for smoke. My wife really liked the last pork butt I smoked - I used only apple wood with the Kingsford and subbed pineapple juice for the usual apple juice in the foil pan the butt sits over. The drippings and pineapple juice work great together!
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Interesting Mike... Never woulda thought to use pineapple juice...
 
Brady ATX said:
What is a good charcoal brand to get. Lowes has a good deal on Kingsford right now. They also have a special on hickory and apple wood.
Thoughts on above mentioned or any other recommendations?
Click to expand...

Brady,

I have a stockpile of Kingsford blue (KBB) that I'm working through. It's good and predictable and cheap (Especially during the Memorial/Labor/Independence Day sales that Lowes & Home Depot run)! Recently though, I've started to warm to Stubbs all natural briquettes. I've only used Stubbs on 2 cooks, both of which were 14+ hour briskets, but I find that they produce significantly less ash. I've had KBB produce so much ash that it builds up and reach the bottom of the charcoal grate, which suffocated my fire mid cook causing me to have to dump the ash are re-light in the middle of the cook.

Since this has only really happened to me on really long cooks (i.e. briskets), and I have probably 100+ lbs of KBB in storage, I still use KBB as my primary fuel, both in my kettle and in the WSM for "shorter" (5-10 hours) cooks. But when I know I'm in it for the long haul I'll go out and buy a bag of Stubbs.

As far as smoke wood. Hickory and apple is a very good place to start. I often use a little of both when doing pork. I also like Pecan or apple on poultry, and I've even used mesquite on beef. I was surprised how much I liked the mesquite, but it was a gift so I needed to use it.
 
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