Had A Good Experience With RO Briquettes


 
Michael M.

Michael M.

TVWBB Fan
I've been testing various fuels as of late. Had used Kingsford Blue all last year but wanted to see what else was out there. Had a good experience with Royal Oak Natural Lump last month but had an even better experience with Royal Oak Briquettes yesterday while doing a whole turkey.

The heat stayed high with all vents open and even the door ajar on and off and I could see that minor adjustments to the vents would have dropped the heat easily and kept it there if it was a low and slow cook even though this one was not.

I may be sold on RO Briquettes from here on. The natural lump is good, but I do like uniform sized briquettes for consistency overall. Will see how it performs on a pork butt long cook session in a few weeks.
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I am a HUGE fan of Royal Oak. Their lump is my main fuel (took a few times to get the hang of it), and I use it almost exclusively for grill and < 4 hour smoking. But I like their briquets as well. Nice smell, nice burn.
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Their big RO Chef's Select briqs are even better. I get 'em from doitbest.com at a pretty fair price and have them delivered to a local hardware store, no shipping costs added to the price.
 
I've only ever used blue K plus a bag or two of cowboy lump and a couple bags of lump from BBQs Galore (store brand). Both lumps seriously disappointed (too many sparks, huge pieces and tiny pieces but no normal pieces, etc). I've wanted to try RO for a while, so thanks for another vote of confidence in their product. Plus the price is right at Wally World.

Blue k has been good to me, but I really hate how much ash it leaves.
 
Tim,

RO lump has very little sparking when it's in the chimney and NONE while it's cooking, is more moderately sized (compared to other brands) and is pretty consistent from bag to bag. It also has a nice smell when it lights and burns. Very little ash too compared to briquets (esp. blue K).
 
Hey Michael, have you tried STUBBS charcoal briquettes, They seem to last about as long as K, or Royal Oak briquettes. STUBBS is a hard wood Briquettes.
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All I use is RO. Mainly lump but I use the briquettes when doing long smokes. I find the briquettes produce WAY more ash than the lump.
 
The whole ash thing doesn't bother me really. The WSM has enough room to handle that based on the design so no problem from my point of view on that angle.

RO lump bothered me a little with my two uses with the sparking and popping I experienced while the lump was in my chimney. It was significant. Not a huge deal but had not ever seen that before.

Stubbs: I have not used this yet and would like to. My understanding is it is not especially cost effective but I will research and see.

I'm going to use these RO briquettes a couple more times. My aim is to find a fuel and stick with it. I don't even have a huge problem with Kingsford blue. Just that startup smell and continuing odor during Minion cook sessions. Just too heavy for me and, I suspect, my neighbors. :-)

Thanks for the feedback so far!

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Michael do you have a charcoal grill as well or just the WSM? Wondering if you've used the RO briquettes to grill food as well or have you just smoked with it?
 
Michael,

Regarding the sparking in the chimney, are you comparing the RO lump to other lump, or to the briquets? Every lump I've used sparks a little during initial ignition/heat up, but compared to others, RO has very little of this, and no sparking or popping during the cooking (I've had other lump- Kingsford- that still spark and pop while they cook).
 
Hey Mike:

I don't have any other charcoal grill but I have seared on the WSM (Tri Tip - once I was done smoking, I removed it, took out the center section, and put the grill on the bottom section closest to my coals for a final sear) but not with these RO Briquettes. I have only done this with RO lump and Kingsford Blue bag with good success. Will have to try these in that mode as well. They burn very hot so I would think it would do a nice job.
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Hi Matt: Comparing it to briquettes which is probably not a fair comparison overall. And I didn't see any popping/sparking when cooking, only on start up. Normal I would guess, just didn't realize it would do that.
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Thanks for the feedback Matt.

To address some other comments, the lumps I've used (Cowboy, BBQs Galore) sparked HORRIBLY (I mean really really bad) while in the chimneyy and also in the OTG.

In terms of Michael's comment regarding ash, the problem I have with it is that sometimes when I open the lid and the wind blows it blows the ash up onto the food. Doesn't have a huge impact-usually-but I just don't like it in principle.

Thanks!
 
Wind is another subject of course, Matt, and I agree on that. I guess the answer is, when it comes to using your smoker on a windy day, you really need to watch your ash.
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The other problem with lots of ash (in addition to all the non-wood additives it signifies) is that on longer cooks, it's important to keep the charcoal from smothering under its own ash; kick the legs, stir the coals, etc....

Michael, if the boss is coming over for the cookout, then you need to cover your ash.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Matt Sanders:
The other problem with lots of ash (in addition to all the non-wood additives it signifies) is that on longer cooks, it's important to keep the charcoal from smothering under its own ash; kick the legs, stir the coals, etc.... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's THE problem, as far as I'm concerned. Out of MANY bags of Stubbs, I've only had it with one, but with MANY a bag of K blue, even on shorter cooks.
 
I love RO briquettes, plus the FT Bliss commissary carries it...making it one of the cheapest/per lb I can buy in El Paso.

Dennis
 
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