Charcoal ?

[BC Buck]

I have no experience with charcoal and lighting. Bought small bag of cheap Ridge brand charcoal $4 for 7LB. Was planing to light small quantity to set wood chunks on for more smoke in pellet grill. Held torch on for 30+ seconds but would not hardly light or stay lit. Made chimney out of cans and lit paper under it but after paper burned up charcoal had not stayed lit. This charcoal has not been exposed to moisture. Is this normal?

[surfdog]

No experience with that charcoal...but clearly not normal.

Reminds me of some imported coal I tried to light during a miner’s strike back in the UK thirty-odd years ago.

[klflowers]

Go with Kingsford original. More expensive, but lights and burns well. Been around for years.

[Randy-Phx]

Charcoal and wood chunks in your pellet grill? What am I missing?

[Troutman]

I know right?

[lostclusters]

Maybe what you are missing is imagination. To me, and the OP said as much, is trying to increase the smoke profile. Not an unheard of issue with pellet smoker.

[RonB]

Most here use a smoke tube of some sort to add smoke to a pellet cook.

[CaptainMike]

While I don't know what brand of pellet grill you have, it's difficult for me to imagine a scenario that utilizes briquettes and wood for this application. There are affordable accessories available to add more smoke to a pellet rig. I'm concerned that using a batch of lit coals might damage your unit. There's a few more moving parts to a pellet pooper that might not like the higher temps of burning charcoal.

[jfmorris]

I agree with others - don’t use charcoal in a pellet grill. But for charcoal, Kingsford would stay lit after a minute or two with a blow torch.

[Steve R.]

Not sure about the pellet grill application... but for lighting, get a real chimney lighter with a Weber starter cube underneath it. If it doesn't light that way, you should probably throw it out and get some Kingsford original.

[BC Buck]

My plan is to set 3 or 4 chunks of charcoal in 3"x 5" cast iron pan in grill. Then take chunks of apple or hickory and set on top of charcoal to give me more smoke flavor. Been trying different things to get more stick burner flavor and not happy with smoke tube. Also lost my best apple tree at the farm and hate to see good wood go to waste.

[Fire Art]

That seems to be the biggest complaint on pellet grills. What I do I use a different cooker when I want a heaver smoke. Or turn the temp to smoke setting and turn my P setting to 7 and smoke for a couple of hrs then turn temp control to what ever temp I want to cook at and reset my P setting to three. Adds a couple hrs to the cook but gives you moor smoke. I don’t like my smoke tube either

[jfmorris]

That seems like a plausible plan - I would just get good quality charcoal next time - get a bag of Kingsford - and consider using one of their wax starter cubes, and mound up the charcoal as best you can with that small amount.

[Randy-Phx]

You can put the wood chunks on the deflector shield for additional smoke and the charcoal is not needed. Or, you can use smoke cubes. I’ll see if I can find the brand. I use a wegie, similar to a tube, and it makes smoke pour out of my pellet smoker.

Found it - Mojobricks.