Grilling/smoking question: Anthracite coal?

[NetWareHead]

Title of thread says it all. Anthracite burns with a roaring glow and barely any flame and a ton of heat. Reminds me of wood charcoal actually. The low sulfur coals especially have barely any smell and no smoke.

Can they be used directly for grilling or maybe better for smoking? My only concern is that coal may not be suitable for consumption, grilling directly on top of it. But I have seen coal fired pizza ovens that cook very well. So what about for smoking? A nice load of anthracite in a side firebox will provide plenty of heat for smoking for a long time, with some cherry, apple or hickory wood on top of that for flavor. Opinions?

 

[lxskllr]

Smoking and grilling aren't good for you, period. That said, give it a try. I like food cooked over peat, which is a precursor to coal. It smells great, and gives the food a good flavor, but it still isn't good for you :^P

 

[bignateyk]

Title of thread says it all. Anthracite burns with a roaring glow and barely any flame and a ton of heat. Reminds me of wood charcoal actually. The low sulfur coals especially have barely any smell and no smoke.

Can they be used directly for grilling or maybe better for smoking? My only concern is that coal may not be suitable for consumption, grilling directly on top of it. But I have seen coal fired pizza ovens that cook very well. So what about for smoking? A nice load of anthracite in a side firebox will provide plenty of heat for smoking for a long time, with some cherry, apple or hickory wood on top of that for flavor. Opinions?

I'm pretty sure it would be toxic.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Usually one of the benefits of charcoal or wood is that the wood it's from adds flavor to the food you are cooking. I'm not so sure it'd be any better than using gas.

 

[bignateyk]

http://www.smfrancis.demon.co.uk/airwolvs/23healthmetal.html

 

[0roo0roo]

just use briquets, its made from scrap/saw dust, good as recycling

 

[NetWareHead]

Well the reason why I ask is that Im planning to heat with coal and will always have a few tons of it around. After seeing a coal fired pizza oven recently, I started thinking and wondering if it can be used for cooking purposes.

 

[mmntech]

I'm pretty sure it would be toxic.

This. It's coal. Using it to me would be little different than using crude oil to grill. Yeah, they're both organic but you wouldn't want to eat the fumes. Stick with regular lump charcoal.

 

[Bill Brasky]

I just did a little bit of reading on coal ovens, since I just had my first pizza baked in a coal fired oven two days ago. Anyway, it sounds like you have to an oven built specifically for burning coal with proper ventilation. So I wouldn't try it on your home grill unless you know what you're doing.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070704020048AARsgSG

If it was high quality coal, it probably wouldn't make the meat unsafe to eat, just unpalatable -- it would have a slight taste similar to burnt motor oil.

Charcoal and coal are two very different things.

Charcoal is prepared by heating wood in the absence of oxygen. In this process volatile compounds in the wood (e.g., water, hydrogen, methane and tars) pass off as vapors into the air, and the carbon is converted into charcoal.

Manufacturers of charcoal briquettes (as opposed to lump charcoal) then crush the charcoal and mix it with many additives including a small amount of anthracite coal for longer burning. That's one of the reasons meat cooked over charcoal briquettes usually won't taste as good as meat cooked over lump charcoal.

 

[Scotteq]

Because Coal smoke makes the food taste like shit.

You'd have to make an indirect setup, where the coal smoke is kept away from your food.