You can use wood pallets in the charcoal grill as fuel, considering it a good idea to mix them with charcoal to carry out the best results in terms of flavor.
As you know, charcoal is the finest and most comfortable way to cook food, and charcoal grills are easier to use than gas grills and can be easily controlled over the cooking temperature.
These wood pellets are a prominent fuel choice for charcoal grills because they burn at low temperatures. Wood pellets are cleaned rather than cordwood, and as a result, no dirt and bugs are brought into your house.
The tremendous majority of contemporary pellets are made from a combination of sawdust and wood residues, which are called pellets.
Page Contents
Benefits of Charcoal with Wood Pellets:
The question arises as to why wood pellets might be used with a charcoal grill?
Traditionally, people used wood chips or logs to flavor their food with charcoal. But here are to utilizing wood pellets has quite a few benefits.
Grilling wood pellets are really made from residual sawdust from wood yards and wood production factories. Scrap dust must be collected and then compressed into the little cylinder that’s called pellets. By using pellets, you are basically reusing old pieces of wood and helping a business that is good for the environment.
You can achieve some delicious, wood-fired flavors. Nothing beats properly wood-smoked foods–the flavor is so remarkably rugged and unique.
A broad variety of wood pellets is available. Almost every kind of wood you’d ordinarily be able to smoke in a pipe or cigar can be detected in pellet form.
Which one is well-known? Mesquite, Maple, Apple, Cherry, Oak, Alder, and Pecan.
As compared to other fuels, wood pellets are most efficient. Due to the rigidly packed of sawdust particles, their contained energy turned into heat. Wood chips and logs are less expensive, but they don’t provide as much value as pellets.
Wood pellets are clean, safe, and easy to work with, especially compared to charcoal. Their residue leaves minimal ash and residue because this cleanup process is pretty easy.
How to Use Wood Pellets in a Charcoal Grill?
Always remember that pellets would not be the primary source of fuel. Its use is to make food delicious and smoky. And it’s already been mentioned that wood pellets are very fine and are useful for a charcoal grill.
How to use wood pellets in a charcoal grill?
- Start a charcoal fire as you commonly would on the grill. It is suggested the easiest way to do this is with the help of a chimney starter, but you should use every method that is considered the easiest way.
- To show that your fire is hot and ready to cook, you must wait until the charcoal glows with the characteristic burning light.
- The next step is to spread a blanket of your favorite BBQ wood pellets over the hot coals. There is no need to dump a small mountain on there, but you also want to make sure that there are enough pellets to emit the proper amount of smoke.
- An important thing is to wait for the pellets to ignite. When pellets emit the delicious smoky flavor.
Related: WHY Won’t My Charcoal Stay Lit
How to Smoke Meat with Wood Pellets?
If this is your first-time experience cooking with wood pellets, then it’s necessary to understand how to use them. As with anything, you need to be understood the basics first before you can move on to some special tricks used by professionals.
1. Wood-Fired Taste:
It’s a good thing pellet grills are constructed from sawdust hardwood, which is a by-product of furniture and other industries. You can save and protect your environment by using this clean source of fuel.
However, the wood pellets have definitely had good taste and have better flavor than the smoke that comes from burning natural gas or propane. It was not mentioned that propane gas heats up too quickly and tends to dry up, which is a potential problem.
2. Grilling with Wood Pellets:
Is it possible to cook using wood pellets? Yes, and nothing compares to the flavor of wood-fired pizza or smoked meat. Wood pellet grill and smoker can have the same results.
Hardwood pellets produce the best results since they burn more slowly, are easier to deal with, and produce less smoke when burning.
Burning hardwood pellets, which are more manageable to store and cart than logs, provide the same flavor as using logs. The flames from a wood pellet are controllable and you can use them according to your needs to cook a meal on it.
Wood pellets provide your food a pleasant smoky flavor that tastes like home instead of leaving a propane stink.
3. Different Pellets for Different Flavors:
Whether you’re smoking brisket or grilling burgers, the charcoal grill can do it all thanks to its built-in pellet door, which is readily located underneath the pellet hopper.
This makes it easy for you to change pellets without slowing down the cooking process.
Types of Wood Pellets and their Flavor Profile:
Wood pellets can be classified depending on a variety of characteristics. And here we discuss two major sorts of wood pellets.
Hardwood Pellets: This type of pellet has a relatively higher density and a long burning time.
Softwood Pellets: This type has the characteristics of a high combination of lignin, which creates a high temperature.
Barbecue Pellets: These pellets are produced for BBQ grills for smokers. You can gain the most delicious wood-fired flavor in the cooked meat from these pellets.
Heating Pellets: These flare up home heaters. They usually contain some harmful elements and chemicals, so using these kinds of pellets for grilling or smoking is not a good idea at all.
Wood pellets are further classified based on the types of flavor:
- Apple
- Alder
- Cherry
- Pecan
- Maple
- Oak
- Hickory
- Mesquite
Can you leave pellets in the hopper?
Leaving unused pellets in your hopper reveals them to the elements of your outdoor surroundings, which might cause them to rot. After each cook, remove the remaining pellets from the hopper and store them in a secure container such as a sealed bucket.
Do pellet grills draw a lot of power or electricity?
Pellet grills do use electricity, although this is a small amount compared to the overall power use. Initially, the ignitor requires between 300 and 500 watts of power. To keep the auger, fans, and digital display running, you’ll need to use the watt’s leftover from the cook’s remaining power source.
How Many Pellets Do You Need?
The general rule is that the thumb is 1/2 cup of pellets per 40-50 minutes when used on a charcoal grill. You can always add additional pellets if you find that your burger or steak needs a smoky flavor. It’s true as well you can always reduce the number of pellets you see to make the flavoring less intense.
So, can you use wood pellets in a charcoal grill?
Many of the questions you must ask yourself are, “Can I grill with wood instead of charcoal?” Yes, but to get the most out of your charcoal grill, it’s important to combine it with charcoal to extract the most flavor from both fuel sources.
Remember that charcoal grills work with charcoal as the major fuel source, and wood pellets aren’t exactly designed for charcoal grills either.
So there needs to be some common ground between the two, which means mixing them. To simplify the process, some people choose to invest in a pellet tube smoker, which gives the same result without the use of charcoal.
It’s great at smoking meat, and it hybridizes the grill so that it’s able to grill and smoke meat.
