![]() Some of these foreign bodies are invisible others are obvious-I’ve discovered rocks and concrete in the residue of my own outdoor fires at times. A 2020 study of cooking fuels revealed that many charcoals, whether lump or briquette, contain all manner of additives, including coal, metal, plastic, resin, and biomass. Chances are the charcoal you are buying isn’t super pure. In both cases, the matter comes down to how the charcoal is sourced and manufactured-something the average consumer has little hope of discovering easily. Briquettes, by contrast, are generally made from wood scraps and waste, which might spare trees from being harvested. But such a goal is rarely achieved some lumber is even harvested expressly for lump charcoal. Lump charcoal also has the potential to become carbon-neutral, because it is made from wood, which could be harvested sustainably from trees that consume the carbon that charcoal grills emit. Compared with self-igniting briquettes, which are doused in chemicals, lump charcoal might indeed help you avoid releasing pollutants into the air. Lump charcoal is often marketed as a more natural product-just chunks of roasted wood. But the kind of charcoal you use matters for the environment too. Read: You’re thinking about home heating wrongįrom an emissions perspective, charcoal grills give off more carbon than those fired by gas or propane, because they literally burn carbon. In America, however, outdoor home cooking comprises merely a fraction of home cooking’s fraction. Phasing out solid-fuel cookstoves in nations where they are prevalent, including China, India, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, could reduce emissions substantially. Any reduction in emissions is good, but if reducing your home’s carbon footprint is your goal, you could win bigger victories by examining your automobiles and space heating. Here, home cooking of any kind, indoor or out, is responsible for a small part of overall carbon emissions and fossil-fuel use, no matter whether it’s powered by gas, propane, wood, or electricity. ![]() Let’s start with a small comfort: Grilling has a negligible carbon impact in the United States. The fire and smell of a wood or charcoal burn call forth a sense of rugged pastoralism-but could your woodsy fantasy destroy the actual woods? But grilling can be judged on another register: the ecological one. Other times, they are moralistic in tenor, connecting open-flame grilling to a stereotype of masculinity. Sometimes the disputes are gastronomical, with charcoal champions arguing that it imparts a smokier taste worthy of the fuss and mess. (I’ll save for another time the difference between grilling and barbecuing, but for now let me say that if you think they’re the same, you are wrong.) But many outdoor-cooking purists insist that wood or charcoal is the only respectable way to sear-and the only way to barbecue. Gas grills, fired from natural-gas lines or propane tanks, offer convenience. Among the dads (and the dads at heart) crewing their outdoor firepits, fuel is a popular subject of debate. It’s summer, and summer means grilling, and grilling means arguing about grilling.
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