British BBQ Society Forums

I've heard a couple of reasons for it being said. One is some briquettes have odd glues/easy-light chemicals that should burn off first (use all natural briquettes or natural lumpwood) and the second is something to do with chemicals given off on the initial burn of charcoal but could never find anything telling me what the issue was. But suffice to say I was a little confused by minion at first for these reasons.

I've been using a Frontier for a few years now and last weekend i put 2 chimneys of Heat Beads briquettes (unlit) in the firebasket with half a chimney of lit briquettes on top. I managed to get a 12+hour smoke out of that. Didn't need to refill once. In fact my pork was done before I even needed to top up coals. So the minion method is the way to go imo.

Steve wrote:Do you know why you've been told for years to do that?

We've had several replies Steve, what was your take on it???

Sorry I've been busy and I forgot this thread. I'm not even considering easy light stuff here as if you're using that you're beyond help

It's true there may be a few volatiles coming off charcoal (lump or briq's) during lighting but in the case of lump this is no worse than chucking a lump of wood in which we all do for smoking. With good briq's there should be very little other than carbonised charcoal in there, just some starch as a binder and a bit of lime so not much different.

The main reason we are told to wait for charcoal to be fully lit is as someone has already mentioned, to get temperature stability on an open grill. In fact the addition of lime into briq's causes a nice even grey ash as a visual indicator of when they're fully lit.

If you're using an open grill, then yeah waiting until everything is lit makes perfect sense but when cooking indirect with the lid on there's no reason for it.

When I first heard of the minion method, I thought hmmm charcoal should be fully lit, for about 30 seconds until I thought why should charcoal be fully lit? So I went off to research that and could not find any reason that would affect me on the smoker.

To be fair I don't use briquettes, if my fuel was producing a stink, there was a visible smoke from just the briq's or there was an acrid taint to my food I wouldn't use the minion method, but there's not.


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