Can You Grill with Wet Charcoal: A Buyer’s Guide to Safety and Effectiveness

Whenever you try to prepare for the best family BBQ party, it is not unusual that charcoal which is left outside acquires rained on. Charcoal can also easily get wet when you try to store it in a garage or shed, as moisture can easily seep into charcoal bags if not correctly closed or stored securely. Can you grill with wet charcoal or not? It’s a common question that’s asked by lots of charcoal users.

In this guide, we will explain two main things. The first one is, can wet charcoal can be easily salvaged or not. Second one, and if the reply to question number one is “yes,” then how can it be done with ease? So, to come up with those points, let’s not waste more time and come to the right point. No doubt, that moisture will easily crumble cheap charcoal briquettes, interpreting them as worthless. But you don’t need to buy a new bag of coals instead, wet lump charcoal, on the other hand, can be simply dried in the sun for one day and easily used up.

Can You Grill with Wet Charcoal: Preparation

• First of all, you need to dry the coals in the sun for as long as possible, and then light them in your chimney starter as you’d usually do, then pile them up in the pit and just wait until they’ve started to ash over easily. That’s how you can come to know they’re ready to cook.
• You can also expect the coals to take longer to ignite, and you don’t expect them to give off too much heat the first time. Until its fire is burning correctly and the coals are dry, they’ll smoke and burn at a lesser temperature.
• However, any type of moldy charcoal should never be used at all. Not just can it provide the food with a bad taste, but your smoke can also be toxic and therefore damaging to your health.
• Some people claim that it’s okay to cook over moldy coals as long as you wait until they turn fully white and ashy. I wouldn’t recommend taking the chance, and if you want to follow my advice, then you shouldn’t either.

What to Do With Wet Charcoal Briquettes:

Briquettes which commonly made a household staple, in 1919, after advertising more than a million unique models, each of which obligatory hundred board feet of wood to produce. Lots of people are looking for a technique to put such leftovers to better use. So, by simply compressing the sawdust with some quantity of coal dust, borax, and petroleum binders, and just turning it into fuel for the American homeowner this problem can be easily resolved.

The main arrangement of this briquette coal creates a sensible and relatively much better fuel for cooking purposes. It’s also considered one of the big reasons that briquette coal does not hold up very well to moisture. However, the moisture eats away at the petroleum binder and can simply turn your coal into an unworkable pile of black dust.

Can We Use Wet Lump Charcoal?

Lump charcoal is dissimilar from the briquettes. However, it’s made from trees, logs, or pieces of wood burning in a furnace with the lack of oxygen, lump charcoal holds its form well, even when it’s wide open to excessive moisture. That process, in case you doubt, is what pulls the sap and the moisture out of the lumps, letting them burn warmer and lengthier than briquettes do. You can uncover the lumps to dampness, and they will soak almost the entire amount of the lost moisture right back up.

Here the main point is that it’s reversible, not like briquette charcoal. To dry your wet charcoal, you have to cover a strip on your driveway or the sunny patch in the backyard with the help of painter’s plastic or a cardboard sheet, by spacing out the coals on it and just leaving them to dry in the sun.

Moreover, apart from that you can simply turn your coals over halfway in until they are no longer soggy. Sometimes, you find that your coals are very wet in the early morning; in that case, just let them dry in the sun before noon, turn them over in the afternoon, and finally light them in the early evening. It’s a fact that patience is a virtue: the more time you spend on this step, the better you will be successful in saving the coals. No doubt, you can go without the cover, but the collection of the dried charcoal will be harder, as you’ll have to do it coal through coal, and you’ll end up with a hell of a mess to clean from where the coals sat. That’s why do yourself the best favor and do not skip the ground cover. At the very least, you can place the coals on your parchment paper.

Furthermore, opened or torn bags of charcoal must be used rapidly, especially if they have been treated with lighter fluid. You can roll up the bag, cover it in a simple container, and store it away from direct sunlight in a cool but not damp place indoors. However, a dry basement with a dehumidifier is best suitable, as is your garage. Keep in mind that the container should be raised off the ground and surely placed away from windows and/or direct sunlight contact. As you all know, unopened briquettes have a shelf life of one to two years from the time of purchase, while lump charcoal can last up to ten years.

Can You Grill with Wet Charcoal? Conclusion:

Charcoal can also easily get wet when you try to store it in a garage or shed, as moisture can easily seep into charcoal bags if not correctly closed or stored securely. However, you can barbecue with wet charcoal as long as it’s not turned to dust and you’ve taken the time to dry it in the sunlight.