Charcoal vs Propane...

Drawing inspiration from the meme thread.

What say you?

Do you grill with charcoal like a fully evolved human?

Or are you scared of flavour and use propane like a wussy?

Charcoal 100. Just smoked my thanksgiving turkey, with charcoal, as god intended.

Ain't nobody got time for charcoal.  

Propane all day. Charcoal is a PITA.

I don't have time for charcoal.  When I have time its nice, but meh.

Takes just as long to get charcoal going in a chimney as it does to preheat a propane, but whatever.

I don't discriminate, I have a charcoal and propane grill, pellet, stick, and electric smokers. 

I'll argue that certain options are better for certain things, but if I had to drop anything from the collection it would be the propane grill. 

In reply to tomtomgt356 (Tommy) :

X2.  Mainly propane cause I'm in a hurry to cook and dont want to eat 2 loaded brats at 7:30pm - I'm getting old and moving towards those 4pm dinners.

Charcoal tastes better for most things. But the propane gets used 10x more than the charcoal. It's also better for pizza, IMHO. 

So propane for me if you make me choose. 

Lol at charcoal. 

Straight wood here 

We have a pellet smoker/grill and a NG infrared grill hooked to the house. I make just about everything on the pellet grill. It gets used about 16 days a month in the summer. I smoked our Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas prime rib on it  last year too.  The gas grill rarely ever gets used. I mostly use it to grill onions and heat up tortillas. 

Charcoal is the only way to go, it barely takes any time anyway so I'm not sure why that's a thing.

Many years ago, we changed diets that ate a lot of meat, so we got heavy into grilling.  At first, I just used my trusty charcoal grill.  But I got tired of the time to get it going, and the messy cleanup.  So we went gas.  And have stayed that way ever since.  

With charcoal, I've never done start to grill in 10 min.  Ever.  And then you have to add the time to make sure there's not too much ash, pile in the old and new charcoal into the chimney, stuff paper, start, and wait.  Then you can pour it out, close the lid and really prepare the cooking system.  I've never gotten that anywhere close to gas time.  

Let alone rapidly changing the cooking temp in the middle of cooking.  After doing a 1min full blast sear with gas, I can turn it down a lot to then let it "bake".  

Sure, you can make the argument that charcoal tastes better, but I would argue that grilling at all is better than not, and I'm much more likely to grill with gas than with charcoal.

Both. Charcoal for when I am grilling a lot of stuff, smoking something or hosting people. Propane for when I just want to sear something from the sous vide or cook a couple hot dogs or get the pizza stone super hot for a pizza. 

I'm firmly in the charcoal camp. Only thing I really use propane for is the big turkey fryer, which we didn't use this year. I prefer the taste of charcoal too. Actually gonna start making my own soon rather than using kingsford. 

Charcoal for grilling and smoking. Can keep at 250 all day or pump up to 700+ and everything in between.

Oven on broil and/or hot hot cast iron pan on stove maybe for a one off quick sear when needed.

If I can't make a meal in under 30 min it's not happening so it's propane for me.

Propane all the way.  Everything I have had off a charcoal grill tastes burnt from the charcoal.

In reply to RevRico :

I have a Weber propane grill and I can have it at 500dF inside of 5 minutes, and that includes getting it out of the shed.

Charcoal is nicer but it is a let's spend Saturday afternoon hanging out on the deck and cooking thing, not a let's get dinner on the table Wednesday night after work thing. 

charcoal every time. Thanksgiving turkey, steaks on Sunday, fish, all of the things.

Kingsford I think is coal based where as chunk charcoal is wood based. Two very different flavors.  I am not 100 percent on this but the Kingsford seems to always leave a oil/petroleum taste where as chunk is much cleaner.  
 

All that said I use all three but 99 percent of the time it is propane. Simple quick and done on a week day. On a weekend when spending time on the back yard with a beverage is part of things I will go charcoal.  Also the food you are cooking matters. If it is just asparagus or something  with delicate flavor I go propane if it is beef then charcoal is a bit better taste wise. 

Propane gets used 90% of the time, and the pellet grill/smoker get the other 10% of the use. 

There is limited time between the gym and hockey practice to get dinner on the table and eat, so efficiency is paramount.

Being able to have one of the kids fire up the propane grill to preheat while my wife and I are on the way home from the gym is a benefit. 

Weekends and days I work from home are when I use the pellet grill to smoke something for dinner. 

Propane wins on expediency.  I prefer charcoal but I just don't have patience anymore to use it regularly.  3 kids.  You know. 

No Time said:

Propane gets used 90% of the time, and the pellet grill/smoker get the other 10% of the use. 

There is limited time between the gym and hockey practice to get dinner on the table and eat, so efficiency is paramount.

Being able to have one of the kids fire up the propane grill to preheat while my wife and I are on the way home from the gym is a benefit. 

Weekends and days I work from home are when I use the pellet grill to smoke something for dinner. 

my kids (the ones above age 10) can totally start the charcoal grill themselves. It's easier than propane.

In reply to tuna55 :

Charcoal may be easy, but it's not easier than turning 2 valves and pushing one button.

dean1484 said:

Kingsford I think is coal based where as chunk charcoal is wood based. Two very different flavors.  I am not 100 percent on this but the Kingsford seems to always leave a oil/petroleum taste where as chunk is much cleaner. 

I don't think Kingsford is coal-based, but it does usually have lighter fluid in it, which is what the petroleum taste comes from.