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It’s no secret that both charcoal and wood pellets are extremely popular and affordable fuel sources for grilling.
Pellet grills in particular have become more popular in recent years, and because of this there’s been an increase in quality and variety when it comes to wood pellets for smoking.
That combined with the fact that traditional wood logs and chips that you’d put in a traditional charcoal grill for flavor are relatively expensive, it’s easy to see why one would ask the question – can you use wood pellets in a charcoal grill?
The short answer is an emphatic, yes! You can most definitely use wood pellets in a charcoal grill. In the rest of this post, we’ve created a little guide for how to use wood pellets in a charcoal grill. We’ll go over everything you need to know, along with some tips and suggestions for creating the best possible flavor in your food.
It’s very important to note here that we are talking about food grade BBQ pellets designed for use in pellet grills, NOT heating pellets. Heating pellets often have insecticides or other chemicals in them and are for use only to heat a pellet stove. More details about the proper pellets for cooking can be found in our list of the best pellets for smoking right here.
How to Use Wood Pellets In a Charcoal Grill
As we already mentioned, it’s perfectly fine to use wood pellets in a charcoal grill. Remember, in this case the pellets won’t be the primary source of fuel. We’re just using them to add some smoky flavor to your food.
The best way to utilize wood pellets with a charcoal grill is as follows:
- Light up a charcoal fire in your grill just like you normally would. Personally, I think the easiest way to do this is with the help of a chimney starter, but you should feel free to use whichever method you find easiest.
- Designed to quickly produce hot coals for cooking
- Specialized cone-shaped grate and durable construction for longevity
- Ergonomic handle for comfortable use
- Wait until the charcoal heats up and has the signature burning glow, indicating that your fire is hot and ready to cook.
- Next, we’re going to cover the top of the burning coals with a blanket layer of your favorite BBQ wood pellets. We don’t want to dump a small mountain on there, but we also want to make sure that there’s enough pellets to emit a proper amount of smoke.
- Wait for the pellets to ignite. As soon as they do, we’re ready to get to work on cooking our food. When the pellets ignite they’ll begin to emit that delicious, smoky flavor we’re after.
- Close your grill’s lid and ventilate as necessary to keep the temperature ideal for whichever food you are cooking.
- You may need to add more pellets depending on how long you’re cooking. The rule of thumb is that half a cup of pellets should give you about 40-45 minutes of smoke. If you’re cooking a steak or burgers you might not need to add more. If you’re smoking a brisket all day, you might need to reapply pellets every so often.
That’s it! There’s the simplest and most efficient way to use wood pellets for flavoring on a charcoal grill.
Alternative – Use a Pellet Smoker Tube
Depending on the engineering and design of your grill, it might actually be easier to use a pellet smoker tube. These contraptions essentially fill up with BBQ wood pellets, you light them, and then smoke will produce for up to 5 hours.
- Adds smokey flavor from wood pellets to any grill
- Great for hot smoking & cold smoking
Honestly, a pellet smoker tube might be the best call if you’re smoking a brisket, jerky, or anything else that could last for more than a couple of hours.
Note, the smoke produced by a smoker tube will be stronger and more robust, so make sure you have your ventilation systems set up properly to handle this. If you aren’t careful you could end up with over-smoked, bitter food.
Benefits of Using Wood Pellets With Charcoal
You might be asking yourself why one would use wood pellets with a charcoal grill. After all, it’s probably more traditional to use wood chips or logs as a means to flavor your food with charcoal.
But, there are actually quite a few benefits to using wood pellets – here are a few of them:
- BBQ wood pellets are actually repurposed sawdust that gets leftover from lumber yards and wood manufacturing plants. The scrap dust gets collected, then compressed into the little cylinders that you and I call pellets. So essentially, by using pellets you’re using repurposed scrap wood and supporting an eco-friendly operation.
- You can achieve some delicious, wood fired flavors. Nothing beats properly wood smoked foods – the flavor is so incredibly robust and unique.
- Wood pellets come in all sorts of flavors – basically any type of wood that you could normally smoke with you will find a pellet version of. Our favorites are Hickory, Mesquite, Maple, Apple, Cherry, Oak, Alder, and Pecan. You can experiment and mix and match flavors until you find your favorites.
- Relative to other fuels, wood pellets are extremely efficient. They’re efficient in the sense that almost all of their contained energy can be turned into heat because the sawdust particles are packed so tightly. Pellets are also efficient in the sense that you get a lot more bang for your buck compared to wood chips or logs. You can burn more smoke with less dollars spent with pellets.
- Wood pellets are clean and easy to work with, especially compared to charcoal. They leave minimal ash and residue so the cleanup process is pretty easy.
- The smoky flavor they produce is just flat out delicious.
Things to Keep In Mind
Pellets Weren’t Designed Primarily For Charcoal Grilling
While you most certainly can use wood pellets in a charcoal grill, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First and foremost, charcoal grills are designed for charcoal to be the main fuel and heat source.
Wood pellets are not a substitute for charcoal as the main fuel source in a charcoal grill – that would lead to highly inefficient burns and inconsistent results at best. You’ll quickly find out that wood pellets burn way too quickly when simply ignited by themselves in a charcoal grill.
Wood pellets are also designed to be the main fuel source in pellet grills. All of this just needs to be kept in mind when we talk about how to use wood pellets in a charcoal grill.
Your approach should be that the wood pellet is there to compliment your charcoal fire, and to add some delicious smoky flavor. You shouldn’t rely on wood pellets as a major fuel source in your charcoal grill.
Wood Pellets Will Change Your Food’s Flavor
This should be for the better though! Just keep in mind that charcoal already will emit a smoke that flavors your food. The goal of combining wood pellets with charcoal is to make the flavor of your food more robust, complex, and flat out better.
If you’re new to using wood pellets, I always like to recommend getting this variety pack at first. It comes with 1 pound of pellets in 6 different flavors, which is more than enough to get started.
Make sure you pay attention to the smoky flavor that ends up in your food when you use each type of pellet. It’s a great starting point to figure out which flavor of pellets is best to compliment your charcoal fires.
Pay Attention to Buy the Right Type of Pellets
We touched on this a little bit before, but it’s very important that you make sure you’re buying wood pellets designed for BBQ and smoking. Do NOT use heating pellets in your charcoal grill, or your pellet grill for that matter. Making this mistake will lead to bad, and potentially toxic food results.
Heating pellets are made to be the fuel of in home heaters and pellet stoves. They are not food grade and often times house chemicals and toxins that would be extremely harmful if digested. Never ever use heating pellets in your charcoal grill, pellet grill, or any cooking appliance for that matter.
BBQ pellets, or pellets for smoking, are food grade wood pellets that are safe to use with foods. Specifically designed as the main source of fuel for pellet grills, they also work as a flavor value add with charcoal grills as we just learned in this resource!
BBQ pellets are capsulated compressed sawdust that repurpose unused wood scrap and sawdust from manufacturing plants and lumber yards. At the end of the day, it’s the exact same type of wood as what you’d find in wood chips or logs for smoking.
How Many Pellets Do You Need?
We alluded to this briefly above, but the general rule of thumb is 1/2 cups of pellets per 40-45 minutes when using in a charcoal grill. That’s just a baseline. If you find over time that you like more smoky flavor on your burger or steak, you can certainly add more.
The opposite is true as well, you can always reduce the amount of pellets you use to make the flavoring less intense.
Which food you choose to grill matters too. Steaks, burgers, chicken, veggies, fish, and other similar meats will likely be on the grill for 30 minutes or less anyways, so you won’t burn through a ton of pellets when cooking any of these foods.
If you’re smoking a brisket, full chicken, ribs, or something that has to be cooked a long time, you will obviously burn through pellets quicker.
How to Use Wood Pellets In a Charcoal Grill – Wrap Up
I hope the question of how to use wood pellets in a charcoal grill has been answered thoroughly for you in this post!
Also, if we’ve written a more detailed breakdown on the difference between wood pellets and wood chips for grilling and smoking, so go check that out next if you want to learn more about the types of wood we use for cooking!
