How Much Charcoal to Use

The cheat sheet

Amounts below assume briquettes and a standard full-size chimney starter. Lump charcoal is irregular, so measure it by volume in the same chimney rather than by piece count — a chimney of lump lights faster and burns hotter than the same chimney of briquettes, so start with slightly less than the table says and add if you need to.

If you only remember one line of that table, make it the first one: a full chimney banked to one half of a 22-inch kettle is the everyday charcoal fire, and it covers the large majority of what most people cook.

Why the chimney is the right unit

Recipes that tell you to use “a layer of coals” or “two handfuls” are describing a quantity nobody can reproduce. A chimney starter is a fixed volume, so “a full chimney” means the same thing in your backyard as it does in ours — and since you should be lighting the coals in a chimney anyway, it costs you nothing to measure that way. It also removes the temptation to keep topping the pile up while it is lighting, which is how a modest fire quietly becomes an uncontrollable one.

Chimneys do vary in size. A standard full-size chimney holds enough charcoal for a 22-inch kettle in one load, which is the whole design intent; a compact one holds just under three quarts, which is the right amount for a portable grill or for starter coals in a smoker firebox. If you own both grills, you will eventually want both sizes. The differences are laid out in best charcoal chimney starters.

How to tell you used too much

Too much charcoal does not announce itself as a big fire. It announces itself as a fire you cannot bring down: the food chars faster than it cooks, closing the bottom vent barely changes anything, and moving everything to the cool side still is not enough because the whole grill is soaked in radiant heat. That is the position that produces most burnt-outside, raw-inside first cooks — not a lack of skill, just too much fuel.

If it happens, do this: move all the food to the indirect side, close the lid, and close the bottom vent to about a quarter open. Wait ten minutes before judging it. If it is still too fierce, take the food off entirely and let the fire settle rather than trying to cook through it. Next time, light less.

How to tell you used too little

The tell is timing. Food that was searing nicely stops sizzling, the fire visibly greys over, and everything takes twice as long as it should. On a short cook you can usually finish anyway by moving the food directly over what is left of the coal bed and leaving the lid off. On a longer cook you need to add fuel, which is the next section.

A related mistake is lighting enough charcoal but spreading it evenly across the whole grate. That produces a wide, shallow, short-lived fire with no cool zone, which feels like “not enough charcoal” but is really the wrong arrangement. Bank it.

Adding charcoal mid-cook

For anything over about an hour you will need to add fuel. Two ways to do it, and the difference matters:

• Add unlit briquettes directly if the cook is long and slow and you have time to absorb the smoke. Fresh unlit charcoal gives off an acrid smoke for the first several minutes as the binders burn off, so this is fine for a rib cook where the meat is wrapped or where the smoke has time to clear, and less fine for food that is nearly done.
• Light a fresh half chimney and add lit coals if the food is close to done or delicate. There is no acrid phase because the coals are already burning clean. Costs you fifteen minutes of planning ahead.

For genuinely long cooks, the better answer is not adding coals at all — it is setting the fire up to last from the start. The “snake” or “fuse” method lays unlit briquettes in a C-shaped line two wide and two high around the edge of the charcoal grate, lit at one end with a small number of hot coals. It burns slowly along the line and can hold a smoking temperature for hours without you touching it.

Charcoal you didn’t burn

Close both vents fully at the end of the cook and the fire smothers itself, leaving you partly-burned coals that light again perfectly well next time. Sweep them out once everything is cold, keep them in a dry tub, and mix them into the bottom of your next chimney load. Do not put water on a live fire to shut it down — it makes a cement-like paste of ash in the bowl, and wet charcoal is useless.

Store the bag itself somewhere dry. Charcoal is porous and absorbs humidity, and damp briquettes are the other common reason a chimney refuses to light properly.