Now we're smokin' - why I prefer lumpwood

The second big barbecue of this incredible Irish summer we're having happened on Saturday evening. This time I resolved to do a few things a bit differently to the previous one.

There were some successes and one big failure from where I am standing.

I'll start with the failure.

I switched my fuel from lumpwood to charcoal. Simple reason for this. I had almost no lumpwood left (used it up the previous time) and had a bag of charcoal in the shed. I went through the exact same routine as I was following with the lumpwood and left the thing to burn for 30 minutes after lighting. You know when I took the lid off after 30 minutes you could almost sense the difference. It just didn't seem to be hot enough. The photo above is not one of my own, but serves to illustrate what I was missing. Heat.

I brought out the food, more delicious burgers, and planted them on there. 6 minutes later I came out to check on the burgers and give them a turn, like I did the previous time, but the damn things were not nearly cooked enough.

I'd say all in all the burgers took almost 10 minutes a side to cook. That is mad. Last time with the lumpwood they took about 6 minutes a side and boy were they cooked through.

The other aspect that was so different was the smoke, the smell of smoke and the taste of the burning coals. It was overwhelming. My clothes smelled like I'd been out on the piss in Dublin in 1997. I reeked. This was after a maximum exposure to the smoke of about 90 seconds in total. The food, when it eventually cooked, was really smokey too. I mean the food tasted good and it was cooked through but it definitely tasted different. You could tell it was cooked on charcoal.

Some people might love this. I preferred the taste of food cooked on lumpwood so I'll be buying more of that and forgetting about the charcoal briquettes.

The positives. Well I used the tip about grilling some onions in some aluminium foil with a little olive oil and some S&P. These turned out really good. I also took the tip about the peppers although I let a couple fall through into the coals. What an amateur! I also followed up the beef by trying the banana and chocolate idea. This was definitely a hit.

So, lots of good but my mind is made up on the choice of fuel in future. I'm done with charcoal and switching full-time to lumpwood.

I might try some chicken on the barbecue next time. The chicken on the beer can might be too much for me just now. How about grilling some wings or something. Ideally something like this picture.

Anybody done that? Any tips?