Cooking with charcoal is much different than cooking with propane. The end result is also different, and much better if done properly. Here are some tips to help you get the best results out of your portable charcoal grill.
One of the most important things when cooking with charcoal is lighting and prepping your coals. There are certain things you can buy to make this easier, but if you don’t have anything, do the following: take some dry old newspaper, scrunch it up, and twist in into cylindrical shaped pieces of paper. Place a few of these at the bottom of the grill. Then place a few pieces of charcoal on top, and light the newspaper in a couple different spots. You should get a pretty decent flame, and as long as it is going for a while, it will light the charcoal. To really get the charcoal going, be sure to blow on the bottom of the flame, which will help light the charcoal.
Once you get the first few pieces of charcoal well lit, you can put the rest of the charcoal onto your portable grill. You will need to cover the base of the barbeque, but the charcoal shouldn´t be stacked. Let the it burn until there is no flame, but the charcoal is red hot, and make sure it is well spread out in the barbeque – there should be about an inch between the actual grill and the coals. If the clearance between the grill and the charcoal is too little, your meat will cook too fast, and will end up dry and chewy – definitely not the way to eat a good steak or some smoked ribs!
Now cut a piece of fat off of the meat, and run it along the lines of the grill. This is done so that when you put the meat down, it will sear very quickly, and give it a nice flavor.
At this point, you are ready to put your meat on the grill, as well as potatoes, chicken, or whatever you are cooking. You can move the coals around if you need to concentrate more heat in certain areas, or if you want to stop cooking something, just remove the coals from underneath that part of the grill. Its important however, not to flip the meat more than twice. While its cook, just relax, take a seat in one of your camping chairs, and enjoy that unbeatable smell of grilled meat.