Soleil Farm Natural Hardwood Charcoal
If you grill with charcoal or are thinking about making the switch from gas, here are some things you need to know:
Common, store-bought charcoal briquettes contain lots of fillers like sand, petroleum products, lime and binders. Combined with the burning lighter fluid, each component can impart foul flavor and/or taste to your food.
Natural, hardwood charcoal is almost 100 percent carbon, burns long and hot, and the flavor and aroma it gives fresh food is divine. Using a hand-held chimney (Lowes, under $10) you can light a batch with one sheet of newspaper and a match, and be ready to grill in less than 10 minutes. If you have a lot to grill and need to add more charcoal, you can simply dump more on top of the depleted coals without having to remove the food.
Try natural hardwood charcoal once and you’ll never touch gas or briquettes again.
At Soleil Farm, we produce natural hardwood charcoal using environmentally friendly methods. We use local-grown timber from sustainable and pre-existing forest management practices like:
- Tree stand thinning for forest health and fire management
- Removal of dead tress (standing and fallen)
- Removal of nuisance species that threaten indigenous species (e.g. Ailanthus)
Best of all, using natural hardwood charcoal is carbon neutral. The manufacturing process - which utilizes catalytic converters to burn gasses released from the wood during pyrolysis – combined with burning the charcoal during cooking releases no more, and sometimes less, carbon into the atmosphere than would be release if the wood was burned for firewood or allowed to decay on the ground naturally.
Utilizing natural hardwood charcoal is a no-brainer for discriminating grill chefs, and it adds value to under-utilized, local resources. It’s good for the economy and it’s good for the environment.
Give me a shout if you’d like more information on natural, Virginia grown, hardwood charcoal.
Alan
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