Can You Use Pellets in a Charcoal Grill?

Jessica Wiest
Last updated: August 18, 2024

It’s a shame if you miss the smoky wood flavor from your BBQ. Don’t think we are trying to convince you to get a wood pellet grill, but whoever thinks wood pellets are only for pellet grills, they should not wait any more time and try different flavor wood pellets in their charcoal grill. Now, can you use pellets in a charcoal grill? No doubt you can.

Here, don’t let your emotions run you and do not mix the wood pellets with charcoal and heat them. Water evaporates from charcoal and creates heat, that’s why charcoal heat is not much smoky. Keeping wood pellets under the charcoal will create a steaming process and less smoke will be generated. Thus there are processes for using pellets in your charcoal grill during outdoor cooking.

Here we’ll discuss the favors that come from wood pellets in the charcoal grills and process of applying wood pellets. Don’t miss this chance to impress your family by cooking such smoky and flavored BBQ.

What You will Know show

Why Add Wood Pellets with Charcoal Instead of Small Wood Pieces?

So you know using wood pellets is a common practice with charcoal grills, but the question comes why not using small pieces of burning wood instead of pellets. First of all, people use pellets to have a different smoky flavor rather than having the only charcoal flavor in your meat. Pellets are made of sawdust and some other natural ingredients. So the pellets are very efficient fuel for pellet girls, charcoal grills and smokers. But small wood pieces are not even in shape and take a lot of time to get burnt while you keep them on charcoal. Also the flavor won’t be rich enough like pellets. Adding pellets is offering a quick temperature up and adds much smoky flavor; you won’t get this flavor using small wood pieces on charcoal.

How to Use Pellets in a Charcoal Grill

It’s time to learn the procedure of using pellets in a charcoal grill, you may think, why a procedure is required. Well because you can’t simply throw two small hunks of different wood pellets in a charcoal grill. Let’s go through the considerations of using wood pellets for your charcoal grill.

Considerations

At first, the charcoal grill must have a special grate to prevent the small pellets from falling down below. Most of the charcoal grills are not designed to hold the pellets.

Furthermore, not all the pellets are suitable for charcoal grill, some pellets let out detrimental chemicals when burned at higher temperature. So choose high quality wood pellets that are good for cooking outdoors.

Also do not expect to have an exact taste like cooking a pellet grill, but using pellets in a charcoal grill may not produce the same smoke and the flavor would be different.

Ways to Use Pellets Efficiently in a Charcoal Grill

There are several ways to apply pellets in a charcoal grill, we’ll let you know all of them. As charcoal is taking care of the heat, you should think about enhancing the flavor using pellets. So let’s see if you can mix charcoal and wood pellets?

Sprinkling the Pellets

It’s time to show you how to use hickory pellets on a charcoal grill for the barbeques greate smokehouse flavor. You can use any wood pellets like oak, apple, cherry in a different ratio with hickory pellets to add more aroma.

To set your barbeque low and slow cooking, keep the briquettes across the inside wall of the charcoal grill. Now get a one cup of pellets and sprinkle them over the briquettes against the wall. Now cook, you will see the heat of the charcoal is making the pellets burn slowly and generating a lot of smoke.

Using Foil Paper

Can you use pellets in a non pellet smoker? Well definitely you can use charcoal grills with the briquettes. Now if you want a little less smoke from pellets but want the flavor into your barbeque, then this method is for you. Also for who doesn’t have tiny grates into their charcoal grill. They may lose a lot of pellets because of bigger grates. To stay away from this situation, the foil method is perfect.

First of all, heat the briquettes nice and hot and wait until ash starts to fall on the charcoal. Get a foil about one foot long and pretty square in shape. Now fold it in a way that it turns into an envelope so putting wood pellets into the envelope will be easier. Now seal the envelope from all sides by folding the foil paper. Now get a fork and do a few small holes right over the pellets into the foil paper. That will allow pellets to produce smoke but not combust or start on fire.

Now put the foil envelope on other hot briquettes and within one minute you’ll see pellets start to produce smoke. Now keep the lid down.

Kamado Style Barbeque

To have the pellets into your kamado style barbeque, it’s all easy. Keep the required amount of the briquettes into the fire ring. Now sprinkle the wood pellets half-moon shape on the briquettes across the all of the fire ring. After a few minutes of your fire box starting to fire up, you will see wood pellets are producing smoke too.

Now if you have a drum smoker or bullet smoker, fill the charcoal basket of the drum smoker one third of the volume with charcoal, now spread the charcoal around to have a nice even bed. Fill up the little holes between each charcoal piece as much as you can. Now put the hardwood pellets on the side of the basket and make sure they fall a little below. Now again put a layer of charcoal and then sprinkle some hardwood pellets again.

Using the Pellet Smoker

This is the easiest way to use wood pellets in any type of charcoal grills. Get a pellet smoker tray, fill it with pellets and fire the pellets from one or either end. The pellet smoker tray offers two holes to fire up the pellets from the side. Now place the pellet smoker tray under the cooking grate of the charcoal grill. It generates a lot of smoke, many of us don’t like too much Smokey flavor.

How to Use Wood Pellets on a Gas Grill

So far we have taught you how many ways you can use pellets in a charcoal grill, but what about a gas grill? Can you use wood pellets in a gas grill? Yes you can.

It’s not a tough task to add wood pellets or chips in a modern gas grill. Almost all the modern gas grills come with their own dedicated burner and tray for the wood chips. And if you don’t have any wood pellet tray, you can always buy one separately for your gas grill. Now fill the tray up with wood pellets and put it on the far side burner of your gas grill. Because from this side you will open the lid and smoke may go into your eyes as soon as you open the lid.

FAQ

Can you burn wood pellets in a charcoal grill?

– Well we all had an idea that charcoal grills are only dedicated to charcoal burning, but now-a-days people use pellets even in a charcoal grill to have a smoky flavor. If you simply put the wood pellets on the hot charcoal they will start to burn and produce smoke.

How do you use wood pellets in a regular barbeque when you don’t have a pellet smoker tray?

– Either you can sprinkle the pellets or keep the pellets in a foil paper and then put the foil paper of wood pellets on the hot charcoal. But make sure you make some holes on the foil paper right over the wood pellets.

Conclusion

Well, wood pellets are more ecofriendly than charcoal yet for making the meat juicier you need charcoal and for the smoky flavor you can add pellets on the charcoal. But don’t use any chemical containing wood pellets, it will create toxic gas while on the hot charcoal for a long time. Hopefully next time you will have fun cooking with pellets in your charcoal smoker.