Coconut charcoal powder

[amir]

Hello all,

 

I smoked salmon today in a 3 hour cook at 200 degrees.  Given a few hour cook and desiring very low temps, I used the charcoal splitter and fractured the coco char into 1/2 or 1/3 pieces so they would all fit nicely.  With the splitter, I could get more airflow control on one side of the basket and could keep the temp between 180 and 200 very nicely.

 

After it was done, over half of the coconut charcoal was left behind and looked completely normal and unburned.  I shut down all the vents and waited about 4-5 hours for things to cool.  When the temp had dropped to about 100 degrees, I tried to remove the whole coco char logs to preserve them for the next slow cook...  but as I grabbed two of them, they literally disintegrated into black char powder - poof.  It was actually kind of cool - like something out of a magic show.  The other 2-3 were completely fine.  Weird because these were all nice and sturdy before the cook.  Is this something that you see typically?  Should I not manipulate these after they have been heated?

[wilburpan]

I don’t have a huge amount of experience with the coconut charcoal, but I’ve seen that as well, where a piece of coconut charcoal would disintegrate when moved after it’s been through one round of cooking.

 

I suspect this is why some folks have two baskets, one for the coconut charcoal, and another for regular hardwood charcoal. That way you can just swap baskets instead of having to move the half-used charcoal around.

[tony b]

Yes, it will do that.

 

For tonight's cook, I just dumped the rest of my full basket of coco from a previous cook on top of the coals in the split basket so I didn't have to handle them directly, but they still broke apart some. Was being lazy and didn't want to go to the garage and get another bag of regular charcoal to refill the split basket.

[CeramicChef]

I have not had exactly this experience with the ECC. I have used the ECC on several occasions. What I have seen is that there does seem to be a little degradation of the ECC (not all of the ECC in the basket) to a powder. All the pieces I handled seemed to have some very small degree of sintering .... But nothing turned completely to powder when handled. I use two baskets ... one for ECC and the other for regular lump. I'm not very delicate when transferring baskets and I've never noticed large amounts of unburned ECC powder in the bottom of my KK BB 32 when changing baskets. I've done a lot of low-n-slow cooks and a fair number of high temp sears using ECC without any problems.

Disclaimer: I haven't used the basket splitter on any cook with ECC.

[DennisLinkletter]

The coco char uses  tapioca starch as a binder.. this along with the pressure of the extruder creates the dense logs..

After it's been heated to high temps the tapioca burns off leaving the chunks and powder held together by compression only..

That's why many people get another/second basket so they can just leave the coco for the next cook and don't need to handle it..  

Because it pretty much makes no ash (we're running 2.5% in production)  you don't need to do much before the next cook..

[amir]

Thank you all.  Makes a lot of sense.  Will consider getting another basket with splitter.  The splitter really did help keep temps well controlled under 200.

[tony b]

Good to hear, Amir, as I've never used my splitter basket on a low & slow cook, only short, higher temp cooks to conserve charcoal. Need to do another batch of smoked almonds. This could be a good test case with the splitter.

[amir]

Tony,

 

There are lots of advantages to using the splitter for low and slow cooks (especially ones of shorter duration).  If you use the stainless steel block, the airflow is effectively doubled.  So you have a lot more control over the air flow and can tweek it better.  Second, you can assure that the food item is not at all under direct heat by putting it on the other side - so there is essentially no risk of direct heat.  I smoked salmon at 180-200 last week and it was very easy to control the heat.  Only about 1/3 of the coconut charcoal was used.  I think that if you limit the charcoal and be very careful with the airflow, you can probably even keep heat around 150 for lower temp smoking, but have not tried it myself yet.

 

How do you smoke almonds now?

[tony b]

I have done the almonds on sheet pans, indirect (drip pan on lower grill), one pan on the main grill and one on the upper grill (swap about 1/2 way through the cook), using the whole charcoal basket, BBQ Guru at 150F for about 2 hours (taste them starting around 90 minutes to check if they are done and smoky enough).

 

http://komodokamado.com/forum/topic/4834-smoked-almonds-with-ancho-chile/?p=45268

 

Had mixed success with seasonings. They tend to fall off easily. Used both PAM and egg white wash. The latter worked better. Maybe I shouldn't stir them in process? I now have 2 perforated sheet pans, so hopefully, I won't have to stir them and the seasonings will stay on better.