The Complete BBQ Charcoal Guide

I’ve been running charcoal grills and smokers for two decades. In that time I’ve burned through truckloads of Kingsford, sampled probably thirty brands of lump, made my own from scratch once, and walked enough Southern California neighborhoods at dusk to know the smell of every charcoal in a one-mile radius. Charcoal is the foundation of everything that happens on the grill and in the smoker. It’s the cheapest, easiest variable to get right, and most people don’t think about it at all.

This is what I’ve learned. One post instead of the half-dozen short ones I wrote about charcoal over the years.

Briquettes vs lump: pick one based on the cook

The briquettes-vs-lump debate has been running longer than I’ve been on the internet, and the answer is: it depends what you’re cooking.

Briquettes are uniform. Every piece is the same size, the same density, the same burn rate. That makes them predictable. Long cooks like brisket or pork butt where you load up the Weber Smokey Mountain and need 12–18 hours of stable temperature — briquettes are your friend. The fire profile is flat. Kingsford Blue is the standard for a reason.

Lump charcoal is irregular pieces of actual hardwood. Burns hotter, faster, and cleaner. Less ash. Better flavor — there’s a noticeable difference, especially in a kettle or kamado. The downside is the irregularity. Big chunks burn slow, small chunks burn fast, and you’ll get the occasional rock or chunk of mystery wood in a bag. For high-heat cooks like steaks, tri tip, or anything Santa Maria style, lump is the move. For overnight brisket, briquettes.

I run both depending on the cook. Don’t let anyone tell you it has to be one or the other.

Where to buy lump charcoal in LA (if you’re local)

For Southern California folks reading this, your best in-person options for hardwood lump charcoal and BBQ wood:

• California Charcoal & Firewood, 1528 S. Eastern Ave., Commerce, CA — call ahead at 323-260-5393. Great selection of peach, apple, and hickory wood and a rotating lump charcoal stock. The wood comes from renewable sources, so no angry squirrels were displaced.
• Smart & Final carries decent lump and the largest Kingsford bags you can buy without a Costco membership. Convenient if you’re stopping in for other supplies anyway.
• Surfas has had a nice selection of lump over the years, though stock comes and goes.
• Your local Latin market usually carries lump charcoal in big sacks, often cheaper than the chain stores. The brand varies but the quality is usually solid — these are people who actually cook with it.

For the rest of the country: most Ace Hardware stores carry Fogo or B&B Char Logs lump. Walmart will have Royal Oak. Specialty BBQ stores usually carry the better brands like Jealous Devil or Rockwood. If you want a comprehensive ranked list of every lump charcoal brand on the planet, The Naked Whiz has been cataloging them since the early 2000s and the reviews are still the most thorough resource I’ve ever seen.

Kingsford and the Sure Fire Groove problem

A few years back Kingsford redesigned their briquettes. They added ridges, which they call “Sure Fire Grooves,” and rolled them out across every Kingsford product. The marketing claimed faster lighting (15 minutes) and longer, more even burn time.

I’ve never agreed with this redesign. Here’s the issue. The new briquettes are more fragile than the old ones, especially when they heat up. When you’re running indirect heat — coals banked on one side of the grill, food on the other — you have to add fresh briquettes throughout the cook to maintain temperature. The old briquettes held their shape. The new ones crumble under the weight of fresh coals on top, and the crumbled pieces compact together and choke off airflow. You end up adjusting vents constantly to compensate.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. After the redesign, Kingsford reportedly fielded over 100,000 complaints. That’s a lot of unhappy grillers.

My workaround for long cooks: mix Kingsford with lump charcoal at about a 50/50 ratio. The lump opens up airflow as the briquettes crumble, and the briquettes give you the stable burn time. It’s not ideal — I’d still rather have the old Kingsford back — but it works. For short cooks I just use lump.

If you’ve found a brand of briquette that performs like the old Kingsford did, I’d actually like to hear about it. Stubb’s All-Natural is decent but expensive. Royal Oak briquettes are okay but inconsistent. Weber-branded briquettes are pricey for what they are.

The charcoal chimney starter is the single best $12 you can spend

Walking my dogs Gwen and Swifty around the neighborhood on a warm summer night, the scent of smoldering mesquite, oak, and hickory is in the air. Occasionally I catch a whiff of something very disturbing. Something so morbid that I stop in my tracks. No, not my dogs.

The smell of charcoal lighter fluid.

There are still a surprising number of people, some acquaintances of mine included, who use lighter fluid to start their charcoal. Aside from the awful smell that never quite leaves your patio and the residual taste of toxic petroleum distillates on your food, it isn’t even the safest or fastest way to light up the barbecue.

If you know someone who uses lighter fluid, a charcoal chimney starter makes a great gift. They cost around $12. They will save the person money in the long run and immediately improve everything coming off their grill.

If you’ve never used one, here’s how it works. Crumple up a couple of pages of newspaper and stuff them loosely into the bottom section of the chimney. Fill the top section with charcoal. Set the chimney on a non-flammable surface — I put mine on top of the grill grate. Light the paper through the holes in the bottom. In about 20 minutes the top layer of coals will have visible ash and the bottom will be glowing red. Pour into the grill and you’re ready to cook.

There are fancier ways to do this — electric loop starters, propane torches, the “looftlighter” guns. All of them work. None of them are necessary. The chimney is the simplest, cheapest, most reliable tool in the kit.

I’ve even seen homemade chimney starters made from empty coffee cans with both ends removed and church-key holes punched along the bottom edge. Works the same.

Making your own charcoal (for fun, not profit)

Every few years someone asks me about making charcoal at home. The short answer: it’s interesting, it’s not particularly economical, and unless you have a wood lot and a lot of time, you’re better off buying a $20 bag of lump.

That said, there are two resources I send people to if they want to go down the rabbit hole. The first is the history of charcoal-making, which is more fascinating than you’d expect — humans have been doing this for around 30,000 years and the process barely changed until the industrial revolution. The second is the modern DIY versions, which usually involve a metal drum, a smaller metal drum inside, and a few hours of patience. Search “retort method charcoal” for the cleanest approach.

Will it save you money? Probably not. Will it impress your friends? Absolutely. Will you make better charcoal than Kingsford? In most cases, yes.

What I actually use

For the curious, here’s what’s in my fuel rotation in 2026:

• Kingsford Blue briquettes for long cooks on the WSM. Despite my complaints about the Sure Fire Grooves, it’s still the most available, most predictable briquette in the country. I just mix it with lump for the reasons above.
• Royal Oak lump for the Weber Kettle when I’m doing high-heat cooks or running the snake method for brisket. Decent price, good quality, available at most hardware stores.
• Jealous Devil lump for special occasions and steak cooks. The chunks are huge, burns clean, no surprises in the bag. Expensive but worth it when you want everything dialed.
• A bag of Cowboy Charcoal in the corner because it’s everywhere and decent in a pinch.
• Mesquite chunks (not briquettes) for kalua pork and other long smokes where I want that specific flavor profile. Post oak chunks for brisket. Apple and pecan for turkey and chicken.

That’s it. Nothing exotic. The fancy stuff isn’t worth the money for most cooks. Pick a briquette and a lump that you trust, learn how they behave, and you’ll cook better than 90% of people who are constantly switching brands looking for a shortcut.

One more thing

If you’re new to charcoal cooking and you’ve been burned (literally) by inconsistent results, the variable is almost never the charcoal. It’s the fire management. Charcoal is just fuel. How much you light, where you put it, and how much air you give it determines everything.

For a deep dive on indirect grilling and fire setup, the gas or charcoal post covers when each fuel makes sense, and the recipes themselves — especially beer can chicken and BBQ ribs on a charcoal grill — walk through fire setup in detail.

The search for BBQ perfection is unending. Charcoal is one of the easier parts.