How to Use Wood Chips with a Charcoal Grill

When it comes to using wood chips with a charcoal grill, people are often confused. Truth be told, it’s as simple as tossing a few wood chips on the charcoal and closing the lid.

The wood chips will smolder for 45-60 minutes, after which you can add more to the fire; It’s as simple as that.

However, there is also lots of confusion due to the misinformation out there surrounding the topic. A good example is soaking wood chips in liquid.

Truth be told, this does nothing to extend smoke time – If anything it just delays it.

How to Add Wood Chips to Charcoal Grill

Smoking on a charcoal grill is fairly straightforward. You arrange the charcoal in a strategic manner via the minion method or snake or even use a device like the Slow N’ Sear and then add your wood chips along the charcoal.

A lot of beginners are concerned with adding the wood chips to the fire only to see them combust.

If you are concerned with this (you shouldn’t be), you can create an aluminum foil vessel for the wood chips to sit in. This prevents the wood chips from catching fire and allows them to smoke.

The vessel isn’t rocket-science. It can be 2-3 sheets of aluminum foil formed into a small bowl for the wood chips to sit in. Then the bowl is enclosed with the excess tinfoil. You should create small holes that allow the smoke to escape.

It’s as simple as that.

However, in my opinion, even creating a foil boat isn’t necessary. Simply put your wood chips on the coals.

It’s unlikely that they’re spontaneous combust, however if they do catch on fire, just cover the lid. The wood chips will then smolder.

Types of Hardwood Chips

Wood chips are coin-sized pieces of seasoned smoking wood – they’re roughly 1″ in length and 1/4″ thick.

Hardwoods used for smoking is often separated into three categories: mild, medium, and heavy woods.

If you’re someone who likes grilling and smoking meat, you might be interested in the types of wood and how they impact the flavoring.

Below is a quick run-down of smoking wood, however I did a full break-down of hardwood varieties you can read here.

• Cherry – Noted for it’s all purpose nature. It’s mild and fruity, and goes especially well with poultry, pork, and even other types of wood (It’s also my personal favorite for ribs).
• Alder – Has a hint of sweetness which is perfect for fish (namely salmon). However it also goes well with poultry, pork, veggies, and fruit.
• Oak – Has a mild smoky flavor that goes well with all barbecued foods; It goes well with red meat, pork, fish, game meat, cheese, jerky, and more. Post oak is my personal favorite for brisket.
• Pecan – Similar to hickory but milder. It doesn’t burn as long as hickory, which is great for shorter cooks like chicken or ribs.
• Apple – The mellow and mild flavor is ideal for pork and poultry. However it also goes well with lamb, seafood, and even cheese.

You should also avoid woods from conifers like pine, fir, spruce, redwood, cedar, and cypress.

Other Wood Forms: Pellets and Chunks of Wood

There isn’t a whole lot of difference between wood chips and chunks – the main difference is the size and subsequently how long the wood smolders for.

Wood pellets are made from hardwood trees, lumber scrap, sawdust, and wood chips. The larger materials are put through a wood chipper to made into smaller pieces. The wood is then dried to remove moisture.

Wood pellets are designed to be extruded into a uniform size for consistent BTU output and flavor.

Wood chunks are essentially large pieces of seasoned hardwood that are ideal for smoking large cuts of meat, entire chickens, brisket, or pork. Essentially chunks are ideal for foods that require long cooking times.

Do You Need to Soak the Wood Chips?

This topic is heavily debated. However, I’ve never seen any sort of benefit from doing so.

The idea behind soaking the wood chips is to prevent them from catching on fire and combusting. By creating a small vessel as I detailed above, soaking isn’t required as the tin-foil acts a barrier and allows the wood chips to smolder and not catch fire.

I’ve personally tested this and concluded that it doesn’t hold water – I mean that literally and metaphorically.

I ran a test with a chunk of hickory and hickory wood chips.

I submerged one test in a bowl of blue dyed water for 30 minutes and the other for 24 hours.

Here’s the wood chips after 24 hours:

As you can probably tell, there’s almost no water penetration to make the above worthwhile. Regardless of your beliefs, what will happen is that the water will vaporize and then the wood chips will smolder.

However, another reason why this doesn’t matter is because as soon as you lift the lid, the chips will likely catch fire anyway.

If anything, just put some chips on the coals and let them catch fire and then close the lid to let them smolder.

To note: You also shouldn’t soak wood pellets; Doing so will entirely ruin the structural integrity of the pellet. I personally tested this, you can check out my experiment here.

Here’s what the pellets look like after 30 minutes of soaking:

This is especially problematic in a pellet smoker as it could clog in the auger. However, even for a charcoal smoker, the water content would need to vaporize and then the wood would smolder.

Using a Smoker Box or a Smoker Tube?

Smoker boxes and tubes are commonly used for Gas grills as a way to introduce smoke, however they can also be used on a charcoal grill just the same.

A smoker box is a pretty self-explanatory; It’s a metal box commonly made of stainless steel. They are usually equipped with holes on both the bottom of the box and on the lid.

Here’s my old smoker tube – it’s a perforated metal tube.

Using a smoker box or tube is fairly simple. Just add the dry wood chips to the smoker box or tube.

Place the device over the heat source or on the grates and wait for the smoke.