Back in 2007 we found bags of hardwood lump charcoal on the shelf of our local grocery store that were made by Nature's Grilling Products, the same folks who have brought you Nature's Mesquite lump charcoal. As Nature's Mesquite is our highest rated mesquite charcoal, we were really looking forward to trying Nature's Hardwood lump charcoal. Unfortunately, the charcoal didn't live up to our expectations and it received a poor rating.
Fast forward 6 months. We were contacted by Nature's Grilling Products and informed that they had taken the review to heart and decided to do something about it. "Something" turned out to be not only changing the charcoal but also building their own production facitilities so that they have complete control over the charcoal from selecting and harvesting the wood, to producing the charcoal, to delivering it to retail outlets. (You may be interested in reading this additional information about Nature's Grilling Products' approach to making charcoal in a sustainable, fair and natural way.) They sent us samples of their new charcoal and requested that we do a new review. (While they did send us the samples for this review, you can buy the charcoal at Harris Teeter, Winn-Dixie, Wal-Mart Canada, most natural food stores across the country, and independent retailers across the country.)
The old charcoal should be off the shelves by now, so let's see how they did with this new charcoal.
Upon opening the bag and dumping it out on the ground for photographing and sorting, we were immediately struck by the uniform size distribution of the pieces of charcoal. Take a look at the photo of the contents of the bag freshly emptied out of the bag and you should also be struck by the uniformity. While there are no truly large pieces of charcoal, the overall distribution is great, as you can see from the following table:
| Large |
0.0 pounds |
0.0% |
| Medium |
3.0 pounds |
42.2% |
| Small |
3.5 pounds |
50.5% |
| Chips/Dust |
0.5 pounds |
7.1% |
|
|
|
| Total |
7.0 pounds |
|
|
The 7.1% chips and dust is very low compared to other charcoals we have tested, proving again that manufacturers can deliver bags of charcoal that aren't full of chips and dust if they want to. The contents of the bag weighed in at 7.0 pounds, well over the 6.6 pounds indicated on the bag. When sorting through the contents of the bag, we found no scrap, no funny stuff and only one small piece of uncarbonized wood.
This charcoal proved to be very easy to start in our chimney starter test, requiring 2.5 sheets of newspaper which is very low compared to other charcoals. While there was some sparking and crackling, there was no popping in the chimney starter. The smell of the charcoal was a mild to moderate woodsy smoke. Then in our maximum temperature test, the charcoal burned at 975 degrees which is very high compared to other charcoals. There was quite a lot of sparking going on while the charcoal was burning full blast, but the sparks that were exiting the cooker through the lower vent extinguished themselves before hitting the ground. The sparking did tend to die down with time. In light of our experience with some other sparky charcoals, we made a point of looking to make sure that there was no grit deposited by the sparks anywhere outside of the cooker. (In the past we have observed particles of grit deposited up to 10 feet away from the cooker!) We also cooked steaks (sear and dwell) and chicken (moderate heat) and checked to make sure that there was no grit on the food. So, other than the visual effect, the sparkiness of this charcoal seems to present no issues.
Lighting with a MAPP torch proved to be pretty sparky with a fair amount of popping, so as always, exercise care if using a torch to light your charcoal. This charcoal burned a long time, ranking high compared to other charcoals. The ash production was average.
So, it looks like Nature's Grilling Products have made the most of their efforts to improve their hardwood lump charcoal. We have a charcoal with a great size distribution, very low amounts of chips and dust, it's easy to start, burns hot and has a high burntime. It easily earns our Recommended rating.
