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Summertime might be much more fulfilled with cheerful cooking activity at a backyard barbecue. When it comes to charcoal barbecuing, the best lumpwood charcoal UK in your grilling or smoking can help to provide a perfect meal for your pleasant chill BBQ party.
If you are done with seeking out the best barbecue and obtaining excellent meat, don’t miss out on top-notch lumpwood coal for your grill.
Finding the right type of lumpwood can affect the quality of your favourite seared steaks or smokey chicken, so here we are to guide you on the top 5 picks with detailed reviews.
Table of Contents
Lumpwood charcoal is a product resulting in the process of carbonisation. The process is extracting all the impurities and contaminants in the wood to achieve all carbon lumpwood.
To burn lumpwood, you just need to use a chimney starter, and in just 20 minutes, you can light it up starting to barbecue. Normally, the cooking hour can be around 1-2 hours, depending on the type of wood used during the carbonisation process.
Compared to gas or briquettes charcoal, lumpwood is healthier and gives you a great taste for your food as it is a 100% natural product.
Lumps can come in all shapes, sizes, and qualities, so it takes a bit of practice to make a wise choice. There are some aspects to help you consider the best BBQ lumpwood charcoal UK.
Type Of Wood Leads To The Best BBQ Lumpwood Charcoal
Lumpwood can be derived from different kinds of wood such as applewood, maple, or oak. You will notice that each wood type performs typical burn characteristics.
Overall, hardwoods are the most popular type that made lumpwood for its being denser compared to others. Its characteristic produces more potent carbon pieces after carbonisation.
Size Can Matter In The Burning Process
You can find the difference between barbecuing with large pieces and small pieces as they all determine their own benefits depending on your cooking style and the food items.
While large pieces are ideal for aiding temperature control and creating a long-lasting burn, smaller ones tend to block air passages and take longer to light, burning a faster and hotter fire.
Due to their advantages, large-sized lump wood can go for slow meats, long-cooking chickens, or turkeys, whereas small chunks can be perfect for quick cooking such as pizzas, burgers, sausages. However, The bigger the chunks, the better the fuel efficiency of your coal.
Chemicals And No Chemicals
Along with the definition of lumpwood, the majority of them are completely natural and pure carbon. If you find bags labelled “hardwood lump charcoal” or “100% all-natural”, it is high-quality.
The point here is briquettes – other types of charcoal fuel mostly added with paraffin and give out great flames and burn quickly, yet have a terrible smell. These will heavily decrease the quality of your meal as well as be extremely harmful to the environment.
Those briquettes can light your coal barbeque faster and with less effort than using lumpwood. Thus, with an eco firelighter or even a BBQ chimney starter, you can get your BBQ to burn easily without any lumpwood chemicals added. There’s definitely nothing to bother when using a quality lumpwood coal.
Restaurant-Grade Charcoal Vs. Standard One
Standard charcoal can also be as good as restaurant-grade one. But don’t get mixed up by lumpwood restaurant-grade products and some “standard” briquettes.
As we assume, some nasty briquettes can be loaded up with chemicals that both affect the food flavour and the environment, so be careful to choose second-rate charcoal.
Even a mediocre lumpwood coal with a 100% natural source can grill your steaks perfectly compared to restaurant-grade ones. The food still achieves the same taste and smoky aroma as the restaurant’s one.
After reading our guide on how to choose the best lumpwood charcoal UK, but you still wonder which one might be a great fit. Keep reading our detailed product reviews below to help you find the perfect one!
Specifications
Chilla-grilla seems to be the most sustainable product as harvesting from an invasive bush in Namibia. It ensures you with 100% natural lumpwood coal without chemicals added, giving your food an authentic smoky taste.
As Big K Chilla-grilla lumpwood is labelled as restaurant-grade charcoal, it is the perfect coal fuel for passionate home BBQers searching for superior fuel to cook the top-notch barbecue meat, decent burgers, or pizzas.
Without a hassle, coal lighting maintains the cooking time up to 2 hours, suitable for grilling turkeys, chicken or slow pork. Likewise, it provides more than enough fire to cook for the whole family (around 5 people).
Besides, it can be amazingly versatile, thanks to its high output. You can use it for any type of BBQ, including kettle, barrel, kamado ones. This way, you can also apply different cooking techniques to either slow or fast barbecue, such as searing, grilling, roasting, or overcooking.
Pros
Con
Specifications
You can grab a Big K El Cubano 15kg Lump wood which is much cheaper compared to other products with the same size and grade.
There are loads of coal fuel of varied sizes. Though the issue of a decent size makes it burn quicker, if you combine them, you still get a nice, long burn. It is especially convenient as you can sort of and choose which sized coal you need for long cooking or short cooking methods.
The best thing about this lumpwood is that it generates a lot less ash than traditional ones. This makes grilling a lot healthier as you don’t breathe in lots of ash. There’s no more nightmare for cleaning up afterwards as well.
One downside for this is over spitting. Horribly, it’s not just when lighting it but throughout the whole burn, and then you might end up in flakes of charcoal. During the burning process, it also seems
to leave a dirty residue that can be hard to clean up.
Pros
Con
Specifications
As a 100% natural and organic lumpwood, it is harvested from a sustainable tree – white alder, famous for fast-burning and strong heat. Therefore, Alder wood can cast a subtle and sweet flavour on the food, especially for fish in general and salmon in particular.
Alderline Natural Lumpwood varies in size from 5-20cm. For small pieces, you can find it perfect for quick grilling for seared meat, vegetables, burgers.
Otherwise, you can use big chunks for longer heat to deal with long-lasting cooking like steak, chicken, fish. With a bag of 50L alder lumpwood, it is compatible with any type of your barbecue model, including kettle, ceramic, egg type, smoker, braai, gas, or charcoal.
Required no lighting fluid, chimney starter, or any extras to ignite this coal, so lighting Alder lump wood is such a breeze just in 15 minutes. Then it will be ready to maintain a stable burn for your effortless barbecue experience.
Pros
Cons
Specifications
Coming in with 2 bags of 10kg each, Fuel Lodge Lumpwood Charcoal provides you with a generous amount of charcoal, saving it for use for a period.
This product is derived from different wood types, including ash, oak, and hornbeam, 100% natural without any additives. This lumpwood fuel can blend well and add an appetising flavour to your beef, chicken and fish or pizza oven. Fuel Lodge has a high heat output without spitting, making the barbecue experience more pleasant and healthier.
Expected to last for nearly two hours, it can be suitable for fast cooking methods with even high heat and medium coal size. You can barbecue some vegetables, sausages, and hot dogs.
Suppose you are opting for some coal products available on the market but are not sure that they are as high quality as described and reviewed online. You can count on the Fuel Lodge customer service agency to refund or replace a new one if anything goes wrong with your product.
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Con
Specifications
This Marienburg Organic Restaurant-Grade Lumpwood is easily ignited within 15 min, and here it is ready for grilling.
Plus, to make it a more natural barbecue, you don’t need to use chemical fire accelerators, chimney starters. Just use a natural firelighter or piece of paper to light this coal. Hence, if you do not get used to lighting a charcoal BBQ, it’s still a trouble-free experience using this charcoal fuel.
For those who long for products with all organic and sustainable sources, you shouldn’t miss our natural lump wood from Marienburg. This product is harvested from alder with 100% natural wood. And it also burns without smoke or odour, maintaining an environmentally friendly lifestyle for you.
This Marienburg lump product is a perfect choice for BBQ, pizza ovens, charcoal grills, etc. So no matter whether you are a home bbq or a professional barbecue, this high restaurant-grade product still suits your cooking.
Heat dies right off very quickly, though. Its longevity is quite poor. So if you intend to invite some guests over, you have some in the chimney straight after, or you’ll be in trouble.
Pros
Cons
To fill you in, we will have a quick rundown of our best lumpwood charcoal UK for you.
First, lump charcoal Chilla-Grilla from Big K is proud of its all-natural product. You can rest assured with its sustainable source for your BBQ. Another product from Big K, Drumbecue, is much more affordable lumpwood for a restaurant-grade label.
Next is the Alderline product, which is ideal for all-purpose cooking methods. While Fuel Lodge is great for the biggest bag, Marienburg is just easy and quick to light up and ready to cook.
Along with our reviews, we also enlighten you with some frequently asked questions for all problems solved.
The furious battle between lump and briquettes never comes to an end as they are the most popular coal fuel choices for barbecue. Thus, we always have reasons to persuade you to go for lump charcoal.
Compared to briquettes, lump coal is way more organic and natural without fillers or additives than most briquettes. It means that using them is more eco-friendly and greener as well, as the way they impart on your flavour is as pure and unique as BBQ fuel goes.
Not to mention, lumps burn at a high long-last temperature thanks to their dense composition. They produce faster and hotter fires than briquettes, so you need to be careful with your temperature control. This can save a large number of bunks you use on the grill to make your charcoal cook more efficiently.
On the other hand, briquettes have a reputation for light a bit more easily than lumps, while chemical smoking diminishes the entire food quality so much in comparison to lump.
There are several qualities you might opt for lump charcoal. As discussed above, the purist charcoal is so dense that it can offer a much higher temperature than other grilling fuels, combined with healthier features in comparison to briquettes. It can light quickly if you get used to it as well.
Lump makes it easy to increase and maintain even heat levels for your barbecue due to its great response to oxygen in case your grill has top and bottom vents.
First of all, make sure that you are in a safe allowance area to start firing up your barbeques. Don’t forget to equip yourself with suitable and safe equipment like heat tongs for checking the food and brushes.
You can use a chimney starter for fast and simple lighting coal. Then put lumps into the bucket-shaped tool, providing it with some flammable kindling such as paper, twigs. Please wait until the coals begin to burn, then you can move it to the BBQ spot.
Whether you prefer to cook food directly above the coals or barbecue them on the grates for indirect heat to settle the coals in your BBQ, this arrangement is up to you.
It is ready for barbecuing when lumpwood turns grey as they become covered in a layer of ash and any flames have fallen down.
Then just distribute them around your BBQ and start grilling.
House coals are made from mined coal, which is mineral-based. It’s often combined with other toxic substances underground like sulphur. Eventually, some might be emitted when the coals are high burn and impart your food. It is quite dangerous to use them for BBQ.
Conclusion
Searching for the right type of lump wood isn’t an easy feat. The charcoal BBQ fuel market is flooded with numerous options varying wildly in terms of quality, budget, brands. And many even impart very different flavours on your food.
With our reviews and rundowns of the best lumpwood charcoal UK, we believe you are less likely to be swayed by different confusing options.
Crucial to this is the use of good lumpwood. It imbues your meal with an authentic smoky flavour and rich aroma distinctive to barbecue that you can’t pretty imitate with anything else. If you have a top-end barbecue, think of wood fuel as an essential ingredient, so processing a great one can empower the whole tasting food.
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