Nowadays, many people are wondering: Can you put wood in a charcoal grill? This is possibly because they love that natural smokey flavor that you can only get from burning wood.

Different kinds of wood can result in various flavors, but they’re all usually hardwoods. Since hardwoods tend to burn slowly, they are ideal for long-time cooking like grilling or smoking food as you don’t need to continually add more flammable substance.

Without further ado, let’s find out the answer to the question: can you put wood in a charcoal grill.

Can you put wood in a charcoal grill?

Yes, but make sure the wood you’re using is not chemically treated or impregnated to avoid unexpected accidents.
Depend on how long you want to smoke (or grill) your food, choose the suitable kind and size of wood. There are three common sizes: wood chips, chunks, and logs.

As for wood chips, they’re good for short cooking time dishes like steak, fish, or maybe chicken since they catch fire quickly and burn out fast. If you’re going to use chips for your grill, consider soaking them underwater the night before.

Why? Because this will slow down the heating process, hence delay the chips to smoke, and eventually, they will smolder over hot charcoal. Of course, this is just my recommendation. Some people said that the wetness from wood chips would cool off the charcoal, which makes it hard for the grill to reach your expected temperature.

Therefore, you should experiment yourself to see under what condition (wet or dry) will the wood chips work best. Chunks and logs are suitable for cooking in larger areas and food that require longer cooking times.

Is it better to grill with charcoal or wood?

It is undoubtedly wood.
Hardwoods like oak and hickory are recommended for an extra special taste in food. You can also try fruit-wood like apple or cherry to have more options, thus, choose your favorite.

Even though it takes some time for the wood to heat up and reach the right temperature, some people still prefer this substance to charcoal because the heat lasts so much longer, thus help you save time and energy.

A small tip for you is you should let the wood burn until you get a beautiful base of coals. This might take a while, but I promise the result will be worth the wait and extra effort.

How to use wood chips on a charcoal grill?

Now that you’re all cleared up, I’m going to give you some instructions on how to use wood chips on a charcoal grill.

• 1. Pick the kind of wood chips you like. My recommendations are hickory, oak, and cherrywood.
• 2. Get some charcoal or briquettes.
• 3. Put some charcoal in the grill first as a base and light it.
• 4. Next, create a pouch by wrapping some wood chips in layers of aluminum foil and poke a few holes in the pouch. Put it right on the charcoal base.
• 5. You can start a fire now by adding more charcoal to the chimney. Depending on what food are you going to be cooking, you will have a sound base for the food.

If it’s fast cooking, place the wood chips right under the food. In contrast, put the pouch of wood chips on top with some charcoal on one side for slow cooking. By doing this, the indirect heat will let the food have time to be cooked evenly.

• 6. Put your cooking grate on top along with the food.
• 7. Cover the grill, but not entirely. You will need the smoke for that smokey flavor.

In Closing

Can you put wood in a charcoal grill? – I hope my article did give you a detailed answer to this. Wood and charcoal both have their pros and cons.

It depends on your taste in food as well as the effort you’re willing to put in. With the methods I’ve described, you can choose to cook your food with charcoal or wood, or even both.