EcoQue Grills

[gbaglo]

Never understood the mystique of charcoal. Or the suggestion that it adds flavour. After all, charcoal is what is used in water filters to remove impurities.
And, once you add the rub or bbq sauce, who could tell?

[techfan]

Originally Posted by PGDriver

I agree with Jim also and would also note that comparing the the use of a charcoal and propane BBQ is like comparing apples to oranges. These to the serious BBQ aficionado are two distinctly different methods of cooking that produce different tastes.

I think that the EcoQue would be quite interesting to try as for the mess of dealing with charcoal, sorry I just don't see it as a problem.

I highly recommend the foil liners for the EcoQue. Allows you to fold it up with no mess and store back in the trailer.

[Ray N]

Originally Posted by gbaglo

Never understood the mystique of charcoal. Or the suggestion that it adds flavour. After all, charcoal is what is used in water filters to remove impurities.
And, once you add the rub or bbq sauce, who could tell?

Hank Hill could.

[Ruthe]

I'm glad this topic has come up! I'd been thinking about the Camp Chef oven/stovetop and then because of this forum, realized that it weighs about 35 pounds, which I think is too much for me to deal with. They also sell just the oven, which is about 17 pounds. But I just was looking at the Coleman CAmp Oven and I'm pretty sure some people on this forum are familiar with it. Does it fit on top of the regular Coleman stove?

[gbaglo]

I have the Coleman camp oven. It weighs about 8 lbs.
I don't have a Coleman stove, but it does sit atop my one-burner butane stove ( it doesn't have wind shields or a lid ). On the butane stove I couldn't keep the oven below 350 F. I found it will fit atop my Weber Q ( with the lid open ) and that I could get the heat down to 225F ( I was re-heating pulled pork ).

I'm not much into baking while camping and for roasting, I'll just use the BBQ. But, I guess I'll continue to drag it with me, for now, at least.

[daveandsandyclink]

My traveling grill by choice is a Volcano Grill. It is compact, table top, uses gas, charcoal, and wood. It can boil, fry, grill, bake, and be used as a small campfire ring. Many RV resorts and some campgrounds forbid ground fires and charcoal grills especially in drought conditions. The volcano grill gives me the flexibility to adapt. Excellent temperature control, wind resistance, and works well with dutch ovens, outdoor woks, and griddles.

[padlin]

Originally Posted by gbaglo

Never understood the mystique of charcoal. Or the suggestion that it adds flavour. After all, charcoal is what is used in water filters to remove impurities.
And, once you add the rub or bbq sauce, who could tell?

If you can't tell and appreciate the difference, not much one can say to change your mind. I for one much prefer the taste of meat cooked over charcoal, adds a whole different flavor that's not available in a rub or bottle. Grilling with gas is just kind of bland, I agree it needs rubs and sauces.

[gbaglo]

Originally Posted by padlin

charcoal, adds a whole different flavor that's not available in a rub or bottle.

That is what I was getting at. How does charcoal add a whole different flavor? It's used to filter water because it doesn't add flavor.
I use wood chips, hickory, mesquite, apple to add flavor.

Wow. Just hit 3,000.

[padlin]

Congrats on 3k.

My gas grills don't work with chips to add the smoky flavor, the charcoal grills do, I've tried. I use apple. So is it the combination of apple smoke and charcoal, or mostly the apple smoke? Don't know as I can't get a decent smoke off the Weber grill.

[Jrn56]

It is the smoke you get from the charcoal that adds some flavor. Adding wood chips to the gas grill adds flavor too.

[gbaglo]

Went to Steve Raichlen's "Barbeque Bible" to look up the answer.
He says "charcoal is made by burning wood without allowing complete combustion", so I'd assume that the flavor would come from the wood used to make it.
But, read on. "Some briquettes are made from charred hardwood with natural plant starches as a binder. Other briquettes contain wood scraps, tree bark, sawdust, coal dust, borax, limestone, and/or sodium nitrate held together with a petroleum-based binder".
Raichlen prefers lump charcoal to briquettes. He notes that Duraflame briquettes are borax free and use vegetable starch as a binder.

I'm done quoting from this 555 page book.

[santacruzer]

I use the finer cut wood chips in my tabletop charcoal Weber...I buy the brand made for the Indian Chief smoker. Seems to work OK, just sprinkle them on after a brief water bath. Slows down the cooking a tad, though. I've found you need to be ready to put the meat on pretty quick after the wood.

Have a propane tabletop Weber also, haven't found a way to use chips on that one.

For my large kettle Weber I've got a metal smoking box with a lid that gets filled with chips and put in with the briquets. I tend to use larger chips in that since there's no way to pull it out to refill the chips.

[Brian B-P]

Perhaps Baglo's point is that the smoke from charcoal is just plain carbon, with no interesting flavour-adding components, because (unlike raw wood) charcoal is wood that has already had everything volatile removed, leaving nothing but porous solid carbon (which is why it works as a filter) and inert mineral ash. That's my thinking, anyway.

I see that the Wikipedia page for charcoal says that briquettes may contain some raw sawdust, so that component wouldn't be charcoal at all, and would add a wood smoke flavour. I didn't know that before today.

Using wood chips for flavour does make sense to me, and I suppose a charcoal grill accommodates them easily. Still doesn't make me want to handle charcoal, but I do understand that others like this combination. In different (non-camping) circumstances, I note that some smoking (as in cooking with smoke) aficionados use smokers that electrically heat the wood chips to get the smoke.

The apple and cherry orchards of BC's Okanagan valley are being rapidly torn out to make way for vineyards, and much of the wood is just burned off as waste (as is the wood from routine pruning of active orchards). I wonder if anyone is chipping it up and selling it for food smoking? The Okanagan is sort of on the way home for Escape buyers headed east...

Edit note: after I started this and while I was distracted by other things, Baglo posted about the same stuff. I should hit "post" faster...

[padlin]

"held together with a petroleum-based binder"
Must be what they use in the match light briquettes.

Tried a couple kinds of lump charcoal a few years back, too difficult to get it to burn evenly. Maybe if it was a more uniform size, unfortunately that's not the case. Don't think you could use it in an ecoque either.

[gbaglo]

I made pulled pork a while back when the pork was on sale cheap.
It spent about 12 hours in the Q with frequent additions of wood chips.
I noted at the time that, by weight, the wood chips cost at least five times as much as the pork.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by padlin

Tried a couple kinds of lump charcoal a few years back, too difficult to get it to burn evenly. Maybe if it was a more uniform size, unfortunately that's not the case. Don't think you could use it in an ecoque either.

The EcoQue manufacturer says in their spec sheet:

No briquettes handy? Use any biomass fuel: sticks, twigs,
wood chunks, lump charcoal, alcohol or other wood
products.

They think it would work, but to me it does seem awkward in a small firebox. For their larger pizza oven and smoker, they say

Any good hardwoods will work, but some burn hotter than others. You can also use good quality lump (NOT BRIQUETTES) charcoal and achieve good results.

Perhaps in that case - a closed oven - they know the food will pick up the taste from any non-carbon fuel, and they want to avoid the miscellaneous stuff in the briquettes?

[gbaglo]

And, since you can never have too much information:

In 1920s, when Henry Ford learned of a process for turning wood scraps from the production of Model T's into charcoal briquets. He built a charcoal plant, and the rest is history.
The Kingsford Company was formed when E.G. Kingsford, a relative of Ford's, brokered the site selection for Ford's new charcoal manufacturing plant. The company, originally called Ford Charcoal, was renamed Kingsford® Charcoal in his honor.

[daveandsandyclink]

Gas vs. Charcoal is an age old debate. There are advantages to both. Some wouldn't be caught cooking on a gas grill. Some hate the mess and effort to cook on charcoal. I don't anyone can win this. I live amongst the self proclaimed gods of barbeque. I say travel with what works for you.

[shrncnddck]

I used to use a charcoal BBQ for all my cooking, back when I camped out of the trunk of my car. I was surprised to find out, during a fire ban, that charcoal was also a no-no! I ate a lot of sandwiches on that trip ;-)

Sharon

[techfan]

Originally Posted by shrncnddck

I used to use a charcoal BBQ for all my cooking, back when I camped out of the trunk of my car. I was surprised to find out, during a fire ban, that charcoal was also a no-no! I ate a lot of sandwiches on that trip ;-)

Sharon

Expect a lot of fire bans on the West Coast this summer unless things change drastically. Charcoal has often been banned in Washington when there is a fire ban in place.