The 9 Best Charcoal Briquettes (Burns Hotter and Cleaner)

This is a high quality charcoal; the original Pok Pok Thai charcoal.

This stuff was made as a budget alternative to Japanese binchotan which is not only expensive, but typically made from endangered trees. This charcoal equivalent is both cheaper and more environmentally conscious than the traditional Japanese charcoal, while being little less effective.

Thai style charcoal burns for a long time at very high temperatures, giving you the perfect searing heat for fish and other meats, while still giving you plenty of burn time for everything from standard grilling bacon and other meats to slow smoking.

Thai charcoal is one of the best types of charcoal on the market, and this is pretty much the best example of it out there, with a nice fruity taste to it.

As an added upside it’s also pretty inexpensive, with a fairly low price tag for this 5 lb bundle. 5 lbs may not seem like a lot, but when you keep in mind how long it tends to burn overall, it evens out over how much extra you need to use over time with a standard charcoal.

Another all natural hardwood charcoal, this time from Duraflame. This charcoal is very good for what it is, but pales a bit in comparison to the Jealous Devil charcoal above.

The performance is solid, with a nice long burning nature to it that lets you get the most out of each of the briquettes. Being an all natural hardwood charcoal it imparts a nice flavor to your food without producing a lot of thick, gritty smoke that can mess up the texture.

The briquettes come in a “pillow” shape as opposed to the natural “lump” shape of the Jealous Devil hardwood charcoal. This doesn’t really matter a whole ton, but does mean you’re going to get more dust out of each bag.

This is an issue combined with the other factor: the price. It’s not exorbitant, but is more expensive per pound than our winner, which is exacerbated by the increase in waste product. The dust isn’t completely worthless, but it’s not something you want to see a lot of.

For that reason it’s difficult to recommend the Duraflame Cowboy charcoal over the Jealous Devil charcoal, but it’s not bad; worth a buy if it’s ever on sale.

This is pretty much exactly what it says on the bag there. It’s a number of very large, irregularly shaped lumps of charcoal made of a pretty solid hardwood.

The charcoal itself is pretty good, though a far cry from the all natural, high quality hardwood that the Duraflame Cowboy and Jealous Devil all natural hardwood charcoal briquettes provide.

On the bright side, the hardwood is still pretty good and it clocks in at a bit cheaper than both in terms of price per volume, making it a great deal for the quality of the charcoal you’re getting. It can be used for grill baking (an excellent way to cook food in mushikamado or ceramic stove like the Kamado Joe or Big Green Egg).

If you want a good hardwood charcoal for the flavor, low smoke content, long lasting heat, and all around ease of use mixed with high quality that entails, this is an excellent budget choice if you’re not willing to shell out for the premium stuff.

If you are in need of lump charcoals we have the complete sets here.

Another hardwood lump charcoal, this time from Fogo.

In terms of quality this sits somewhere between the Jealous Devil and Duraflame charcoals, with a great quality that overshadows the above Kamado Joe charcoal by a fair margin. It’s made from the excellent quality wood, which gives you a really long burn time even compared to some other hardwood charcoals (like the Kamado Joe Big Block charcoal above).

The main downfall of this otherwise excellent charcoal lies in its pricing; per pound it costs about 20% more than our winner (the Jealous Devil all natural hardwood charcoal) and, at best, it’s just as good as that brand of charcoal.

This leave sit in the awkward spot of being very good…but giving you a pretty poor bang for your buck. On the bright side though you can buy this in fairly large bags, cutting down on shipping costs for ordering multiple batches…but it comes in the same size as the Jealous Devil bags as well.

All in all it’s difficult to recommend this charcoal unless it’s on sale, since it’s roughly equivalent in quality to our admittedly excellent winner, but costs just a bit too much.

This is a good convenient charcoal to keep around. It comes in .8 ounce bags, with 8 good sized pieces of charcoal per each of the sealed containers.

It comes ready to use and doesn’t even need to be offloaded; just light the bag and let it go once it’s in the grill.

The charcoal itself isn’t anything special; a standard mix of actual wood charcoal powder, a corn starch adhesive, and a “botanical combustion improver”. All pretty normal stuff and safe to use, though not the highest quality stuff out there.

No, what this charcoal is carried on is its convenience factor. It’s easily portable, making it great for hiking and camping trips where carrying a big sack of charcoal might not be practical. You can lay it down in pretty much any grill and lay a lighter to it without ever removing it from the bag, which acts as a starter for your fire.

The stuff works well and lights up quickly, touting a 3 to 5 seconds lighting time, for an impressive 2 hour burn from that point; essentially it’s made to light faster than regular charcoal but stay hot about as long.

I’d say avoid if you’re mostly grilling at home (due to the relatively high price point per bag), but if you’re an avid hiker or camper, this stuff can be a great buy.

Good and cheap is the name of the game. Sometimes going with the old standby is best, and as regular, no frills charcoal goes, few match Kingsford’s quality.

The charcoal itself is nothing special, but all of the component parts of this standard briquette are pretty good. It’s a composite of wood charcoal, anthracite charcoal, mineral charcoal, starch (as a binding agent), sodium nitrate, sawdust, borax, and limestone. The chemical components are undesirable but a necessary evil to drive the price down in this case, and don’t provide too much of an unhealthy quality to the charcoal itself.

It burns for a decent period of time as well, but let’s be real: the main reason you’re buying this is you want to buy decent, cheap charcoal in bulk to keep around the house because you grill a lot, and this provides that use for you.

You can buy this 4 pack (72 lbs of charcoal in total) for the price of 5 of those Muxi bags above; pricing doesn’t get much better than that

These charcoal briquettes are top quality and unique in flavor. Most charcoal briquettes are made of a mix of wood ash and some kind of filler; not so with these.

These are 100% olive wood, which gives the briquettes a nice subtle flavor to all your food. It’s great for cooking just about everything, bust especially anything you’d be comfortable cooking in olive oil, as it has much of the same neutral flavor to it.

These briquettes are also great at burning low and slow. They take a bit of effort to get to light initially (since they’re made of a fairly dense, oily wood) but once they are, they burn for hours on end. This makes them excellent to reuse not only for grilling but for smoking.

While it works well with any meats, it excels especially at poultry, fish, and lamb, as would be expected from a Mediterranean wood, being what is often the traditional wood used for cooking those meats in the region.

Another one from Muxi, with a bit of the same gimmick. These charcoal briquettes are designed to light in minimum time and burn for a good long time, while being easily portable and storable.

The composition of the charcoal is the same this time around, though the shape is different. It’s covered in a number of deep divots which help contain the fire and create a good smolder that burns for quite a while.

Fast, cheap, and portable are the main goals here, so the briquettes certainly lack in quality, but they’re perfect for hiking, camping, and other travel needs, or keeping around as an emergency fuel source for when you’re in a pinch.

The main cool feature is that they light in about 3 seconds, making for a super fast fire starter whenever you need it and burn for about 2 hours without needing any additional fuel or attention. It provides an odorless, smokeless flame too, which means if nothing else they might be an interesting alternative to starter cubes to keep around for when you’re cooking with actual wood or something similar.

The main issue is price; you’re getting 4 of these for the price of about 12 lbs of the good stuff (our winner), so it’s really cost inefficient unless you need them for their specialized usage, the same as the other Muxi charcoal above.

There are a lot of great charcoals on this list, and none I wouldn’t recommend under certain circumstances.

My favorites are still by far the Royal Oak Premium Charcoal Briquets and the Pok Pok Thaan Thai Style charcoal. These two provide excellent performance at a great price for how much they’re offering you; both essentially unmatched in quality. The Royal Oak’s charcoal won out after much deliberation because of its slightly lower price point while retaining similar levels of performance (if a bit of a different specialty), but the Pok Pok charcoal was very close.

The others fall short of that mark but that doesn’t disqualify them outright. Some, like Fire & Flavor and Kamado Joe’s charcoals fill the niche of fairly cheap but good charcoals, while the Muxi charcoals are excellent for travelers of all stripes. The only hard pass I’d give is the Fogo Premium hardwood charcoal, unless it’s on sale; it’s both more expensive and lower quality than our winner. Once you’ve made a decision you can then decide on what delicious food to cook. I suggest trying out our grilled bacon recipe. 

Now, when you’re buying charcoal products, you may not be using them immediately. So it is also essential to follow tips on storing charcoal so that when you decide to use them, you’ll be cooking ribs and many other delicious recipes without a reduction in taste.