Restaurant Grade and Premium Charcoal

If you prefer not to get your BBQ Charcoal from a garage there are plenty of great options out there, and hardcore BBQ’ers can get through an awful lot of charcoal even in the winter months when it becomes harder to pick up charcoal. So to get bags of charcoal delivered straight to your door is a definite bonus for a lot of people. There are some good quality charcoal available that can be delivered to your home. 

I was sent a couple of bags of charcoal to try from Direct Charcoal who do a good range of charcoal, I tried out the blue bag restaurant grade and premium restaurant grade. I have struggled with the normal booker blue bag charcoal I had been using, and found this to be of better quality than that, but still was quite dense and undercooked.  This is a product of South America and a blend of White Quebracho wood and other hardwoods.

There was still lots of brown woody bits that hadn’t been fully burnt off, and hence the wood had quite a strong smoke of it’s own, but lasted a long time in a smoker, but gave quite a tarry smoke. This wouldn’t be an issue in an open grill, but causes over smoking and bitter smoke in the confines of a smoker.

The Premium restaurant grade charcoal was very much better quality, I could tell this when I opened it, the charcoal was more fully cooked, less dense, and very much less smoky, it’s a great one to cook in a smoker without adding tarry smoke flavours in the confined space.

This is definitely my preferred charcoal of the two. It’s made of invasive Wattle trees from South Africa, which need constant clearing, producing a relatively good quality clean burning charcoal.

Both types of charcoal offer good value for money for those who use a lot of charcoal, but for my money the Premium is definitely the superior product.

You can buy these charcoals from the Direct Charcoal Website.