Charcoal Series: How to Have a Grill Party 101

My ideal barbecue doesn’t involve anyone (me) standing over the grill for hours while everybody else sit at a table waiting for the food. I want to sit and eat too! I want the food to be hot and fresh (of course), but I also want to be tucking in alongside everyone else. It’s possible. Let’s get started from the top.

Your Equipment

I have a Weber Kettle Grill from Amazon. It is a beginner-friendly grill and a jack-of-all-trades. From grilling to smoking, it can do it all. It’s also one of the most popular grills ever produced, which means that for any issues that you run into, there’s a legion of people on Reddit or YouTube who had already came across - and solved - all these problems before.

A meat thermometer is essential for your cook: it saves you money a hundred times over in all the meats that you didn’t overcook. It saves you the time that you’d have otherwise wasted if you burn a cook. It saves you from the uncertainty of prodding at the meat and wondering if it’s cooked through. When in doubt, follow the FDA guidelines. 

If you look at all my pictures, you can see the meat thermometer probes. Mine comes with 4 probes. There's one probe in each meat, and then one more to measure the grill temperature. 

How to Arrange your Charcoal

Two-zone fire, with the meats being smoked on the cooler side of the grill. 

A two-zone fire is the default for cooks shorter than 3 hours. All the charcoal is on one-half of the grill. Zilch on the other side. You cook your food on the cooler side (‘cool’ being a relative term, because it’s still pretty darn hot). When the internal temperature comes up to target, you sear it over direct heat for about a minute or so. If something is cooking a little too fast on the outside, you slide it a little more over to the cooler side so it can cook more gradually.

For huge cuts of meats planned for a long smoke (3-8 hours), a Snake Method can be used to provide hours and hours of low temperature cooking. It’s a little beyond today’s scope, but there’s a terrific video by America Test Kitchen on this topic, and I’ve used it successfully for pork shoulders.

You will often be asked to cover the grill with the lid to keep all the meat basting in the lovely smoke. The vents on the lid should be positioned on the opposite side of the burning charcoal, so the smoke flows past the meat on its way up.

Getting Charcoal

There are two main types of charcoal for a barbecue: lump or briquettes. Both are fine for a two-zone fire setup.

Lump Charcoal

Lump charcoal is my default for a two-zone fire. It burns hotter than briquettes, but also burns out quicker. I get my charcoal from FYRO, which is a great product. The charcoals are large enough to keep burning for up to three hours (some go roughly up to the size of my forearm). It’s also (largely) smokeless, easily available online, and has great customer service. I once ordered the wrong sort of charcoal, a mistake that was entirely my fault. They graciously gave me a refund and came by my house to collect the 10kg bag back. 10/10 recommended.

Briquettes arranged in the Snake Method

Briquettes burn longer and more steadily, but the temperatures may not reach the heights of lump charcoal. It’s still more than adequate for a two-zone fire. I exclusively use briquettes for the Snake Method for long hours of smoking, but that’s because lighting a whole lot of Kingsford briquettes for a two-zone fire produces such thick intense smoke that I’m sure gives my neighbours grief. Maybe it’s because I’m using Kingsford briquettes? Fyro has its version of briquettes, which it promises to be smokeless. I’ll like to try that as soon as I’m done with the 40kg of Kingsford briquettes I bought (In hindsight, bulk-buying perhaps isn’t always wise).

Adding Wood Chunks For Smoking

I don’t routinely use wood chunks. I only do so if I’m intending to add the fragrance of smoke to my foods (as opposed to just grilling over high heat with charcoal.) The recipes that you follow will tell you if you are meant to add wood chunks. Common wood sources are hickory, apple, cherry, oak, pecans and mesquite. Any wood would do for a Weber grill; most people can’t reliably tell the difference. I use hickory from Weber.

Having A Drip Tray

Some recipes ask for a disposable aluminum tray placed next to the charcoal bed and right under the meats to collect drippings. Poultries like duck or chicken produce quite a lot of drippings and you would want a tray underneath - you wouldn’t want the drippings to mix with the ashes and gunk up your grill! In other smoking recipes (for large cuts of pork, lamb or beef), some recipes may have you add boiling water to the drip tray for a gentler and moisture-laden cooking environment.

You may be tempted to add chopped potatoes or root vegetables to saturate in the drippings, but in my (limited) experience, they wouldn’t be exposed to enough heat to cook fully. The potatoes just dry up.

Lighting Charcoals (aka Am I The Bad Neighbour?)

As mentioned, I use lump charcoal for a two-zone fire. I form the charcoals into a large stack and then light a couple of chimney starters within it. (See this video here on how to do it).

I stack charcoal about 3-5 pieces high, with some of the largest charcoals placed directly at the top where the heat is the strongest. It’s okay if the charcoals are stacked too high for the food grill to fit above it - we’ll break down the charcoal stack after the charcoals are ignited. The most important thing is to have enough charcoal lit. You can turn down the vents on the Weber grill to bring down the temperature of a too-hot grill; it’s takes far longer to add more charcoal to bring up the temperature. 

I usually use two fire starters; one starter is just far too slow. I also place the burning fire starters on a small piece of charcoal, because otherwise the fire starters will disintegrate as they burn and fall through the grates after a few minutes.

Briquettes are easy to ignite with a chimney starter. Fill it up with briquettes then light a couple of fire starters under the chimney. (I imagine even tealight candles would work.) You can have a whole chimney starter’s worth of lit briquettes within an hour, but a chimney works even if you need just a dozen (~10 or so) to start your Snake Method. For some reason, a chimney starter doesn’t seem to work with lump charcoal.

Starting Your Cook: Indirect Heat

For two-zone fire, you want to start arranging and igniting the charcoal 2 hours before your guests arrive. It takes an hour for the charcoal to begin to light up, and another hour to smoke the first batch of meat - so it'll be ready just in time for dinner.

Give yourself an hour to arrange and ignite the charcoal. After the first hour (on the second hour), after the fire starter burns out, you should be getting some good heat from the charcoal. Some parts of the charcoal stack should be burning white. From this point, the burning charcoal will take another 45 minutes to an hour to spread to the rest of the charcoal. You can use the time to cook some meats over indirect heat (on the cooler side of the grill). Do not cook directly over the charcoal. Because of how the charcoal is stacked up, there will still be too many uneven hotspots for direct grilling.)

Unstack the top part of the charcoal just enough for the food grill to fit over the charcoal stack (no need to level the charcoal stack entirely. You want to keep as much of the charcoal stack intact for the existing heat to continue lighting up the rest of the charcoals). Oil the food grill with a thick napkin dapped in a neutral oil, let the grill heat up slightly, then swivel the grill so the warmer part of the grill that was over the charcoals is now on the cooler side of the grill. Place your meats on the cooler half (over the half of the grill that was previously over the hot charcoal), then let the food cook gently. 

What sort of food should you be cooking at this stage? This low heat is ideal for a few recipes. As the fire and heat gradually builds up over the next hour, you may want to reverse-sear some steaks. In reverse sear, you cook the steaks gently at 120C for about 30 minutes to an hour, which is just about the time the charcoal needs to get ready. The grill temperature would likely climb much higher than 120C over the cook, but that’s alright. You can move the steaks a little further away from the charcoal, or just flip it over halfway to ensure even cooking. I wouldn’t fuss too much on this.

There’s nothing quite as grand as pulling out a thick tomahawk steak from your grill.

Other great options are smoked chicken, either whole chickens or chicken thighs. Smoked chicken thighs are honestly some of the best things I’ve pulled off my grill. The difference between oven-baked chickens and smoked off-the-grill chickens is like day and night. If you want to serve both smoked poultry and steaks but only have space for one on the grill, I’ll put the chicken on the grill and stick the steak in an oven.

Once the meat is thoroughly cooked (when the inside temperature has come up to target temperature. You ARE using a thermometer, aren’t you?), I would transfer them to the hot side of the grill for direct grilling for a brief minute or two before serving. At the end of this hour, if you timed it right, you should be ready to serve the food just as your guests arrive.

What I prefer to do is to remove the smoked meats from the grill just after the internal temperature has come up to target, before the direct grilling step. I’ll leave them to rest at room temperature, and next get started on direct grilling. When dinner gets underway, I’ll return the precooked smoked meats to the grill for the 1-2 minutes of direct heat, and then serve them.

Starting Your Cook: Direct Heat (Grilling)

Before starting direct grilling, you would want to fully break down the burning charcoal stacks and spread the charcoal evenly over half of the grill to avoid any hot spots.

The type of food to cook at this stage would be those that cooks rapidly over high heat, such as thin steaks, hamburger patties and pizzas. 

When you’re done grilling, cover the grill with the lid, making sure to close both the top and bottom vents. This will smother the burning charcoal. After the charcoal bed cools down overnight, you can salvage unburnt charcoal for your next cook.

Contingency Plans

It’s possible to start smoking huge cuts of meat first thing in the morning (via Snake Method), then transit to a two-fire zone for the actual barbecue. A Weber Grill can handle a full brisket (~7-8kg), or perhaps a combination of beef cuts and/or pork would suit a party menu better. This is possible though it can be quite a chore. If I’m fussing over a grill for most of the day, I probably would be too gassed out to socialise afterwards.

What I prefer is to hold a simple hotpot alongside a barbecue. A hotpot gives your guests something to occupy their minds and their hands with when you're occupied with the grill. In the best-case scenario where nothing goes wrong with the grill, everybody gets a bowl of flavourful soup to cleanse their palates with as they eat heavy grilled meats. In the worst-case scenario where there are unexpected delays with grilling, there’s at least something hot for people to eat and drink. Imagine you’re hosting a Kaiseki. 

And that brings me to the most important point of them all:

Relax

A grill is a heat source. So is an oven, or a home stove, or an airfryer.

Cooking things over a charcoal stack is not special. People have been cooking food over a fire long before any one of us came along. Even as you’re manning a grill, you’re allowed to use the rest of the kitchen.

Take a deep breath and read the last part of the sentence again. Say it to yourself when you’re in the middle of a cook and the charcoals are not behaving like you want it to.

You’re allowed to use the rest of the kitchen.

It’s okay to sear the steaks over the stove. Or finish undercooked meats in the oven. Or cook the Portobello in the airfryer instead. The size of your grill may sometimes simply not be large enough to handle all the food that needs to be cooked.

Sometimes it rains. Sometimes the charcoal just doesn’t behave as it should: the temperature just remains stubbornly low. Or too high. Or just burn out halfway. It happens to all of us.

You’re allowed to use the rest of the kitchen.

Now go and get ‘em, Tiger.