Chefs Delight Charcoal Issue


 
I

Ivan Stratton

TVWBB Fan
I was in Memphis for 4 of the last 5 weeks. I toured most of the BBQ places I wanted to visit and had a ton of great BBQ foods. I stumbled accross The Charcoal Store and after talking to some of the guys in the warehouse, I bought a couple of bags of Chefs Delight Oak and Hickory charcoal. I lit a full chimney and it smelled great. I let it ash over and dumped it in the kettle and spread it out evenly. It got very hot really quick. I left the top vent wide open and closed the bottom vent about halfway. Grill seemed to settle in and I threw on some burgers. It cooked along fine for I would say 10 minutes and then it started losing temp so I opened back up the bottom vents. It never recovered. There were still briquettes in the bottom that basically just stopped burning. I ended of firing up the gasser to finish off the burgers. They had a great flavor but I think all the moving around hurt the juiciness of them. I have never had this issue with any other charcoal and I have cooked on a kettle 100's of times. Any ideas? The charcoal has been in my car since purchased so it was never anywhere to get damp.
 
I did the ole whack the side of the kettle with my brush handle to knock any ash off and nothing. I opened the vents top and bottom wide open and went in and had dinner. Came back out in like 30 minutes and grill was barely even warm. It's like they just went out. Seems like they were still solid so they were not burned up. Maybe they didn't get lit enough? But at the beginning I was burning my hands cleaning the grate.
 
How long did they sit in your car? Did it rain or get cold while they were sitting in the car? Just asking.
 
They were in my Tahoe foe about a week. It did rain but its also been 90 plus degrees here and that thing gets like an oven if its 70 outside. I'm thinking maybe when I shut the bottom vents down it just suffocated it and it couldn't recover. I'm going to give it another try with a full lit chimney poured on top of some unlit. I bought 2 large bags so ongoing to use it up. It does smell really good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

 

Back
Top