Thaan Thai Style Charcoal, 5lbs

Awesome stuff!! This charcoal is similar to binchotan. It burns HOT and lasts a long time. I live in a condo building and not supposed to have a grill on the balcony but with this charcoal being odorless*, smokeless**, and producing little ash***, I've been grilling like a madman! Again, because of the condo situation I have to be a bit rogue with how I light it as it takes a bit to get going. What I do is put the logs in the oven on the top rack on a foil covered broiler plate with the broiler on high for an hour. While the charcoal heats, I prep my grill items - marinade meats, prep veg, get salad put together. After the hour is up, I remove the plate with the coals and make a b-line for the balcony. I use tongs and place in my konro (yakitori grill****) then I take a pastry torch and hit em hard until they turn a little red. Once theyre going, theyre going! The heat spreads nicely and grilling can start within 10-15 minutes. Best thing about Thaan Charcoal is it is reusable!!! The first time I used, I dunked the coals in water when I was finished but that was kinda messy so from then on I just closed the vents on the grill and covered the top with a sheet pan and it snuffed out the coals nicely. Next time I want to grill I can take the old coals and put them in the broiler with some new ones. The older ones are usually smaller and many times will come out of the broiler nice and red already. This makes it a lot easier to get the coals going using my method as I can make a nice little teepee. I bought 2 boxes (12-14 logs/box...I forget exact amount) and I've grilled about a dozen times and only a few logs into the 2nd box because of the reusable factor. If you dont have the restrictions I have, starting the logs in a chimney starter will get em going quick and hot! Highly recommend this stuff. It imparts zero charcoal/fuel flavor on the food but allows for a nice bbq experience. * The coals are odorless but if you grill items that are high in fat content (burgers, steaks, etc) there will be an odor when the fat drips onto the coals. ** The coals are smokeless but if you grill items that are high in fat content (burgers, steaks, etc) there will be smoke when the fat drips onto the coals. I cooked burgers on my little grill one night and smoked out the whole balcony and then some. Lesson learned. They came out great though :) *** The coals produce ash, obviously because they are coals. However, they do not really produce the red ash sparks that could be problematic. **** In case you're interested in the yakitori grill that I use, link is here: Fire Sense Large Yakatori Charcoal Grill

I bought this looking for a longer lasting alternative to regular Kingsford charcoal briquettes. Barbecues at our house are usually an all-day affair with over 40 guests so I really wanted to reduce the time used to switch out or add charcoal to the grill. I've used this charcoal a few times so far and am loving it. It produces less ash than the regular Kingsford charcoals and lasts much longer. I use 4-8 pieces of this at a time and they last over 4 hours giving me a hot steady heat throughout. That means less work and time spent on charcoal upkeep and more time to chat with friends and getting food out! Also, I read somewhere that if you're done grilling but this charcoal isn't finished burning, you can run this charcoal under water to put it out and save it to use next time. I haven't tried this yet though, since I usually grill to the end. I see some of the reviews mentioning the difficulty in lighting them. Binchotan-type charcoal like this is usually denser than regular charcoal and thus, harder to light. You need to apply heat a bit more consistently to get them to light. This is the way I do it: I light some regular Kingsford briquettes with a chimney starter (http://www.amazon.com/Weber-7416-Rapidfire-Chimney-Starter/dp/B000WEOQV8) and when they're ready, I pour them into the grill and spread them out. Then I lay the Thaan charcoal pieces out evenly on top of the lit charcoal (sometimes stacking them which seems to be more efficient) and leave them there to light. Alternately, you can use a charcoal basket lighter (something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Camp-Chef-Charcoal-Lighter-CLB-9/dp/B000M9NJ1G/) to light it on your gas stove. Last tip: it's cheaper to buy this here from Amazon (with Prime) than direct from Pok Pok.... not to mention the faster shipping time.

For the most part, this is a good product at a fair price. It makes a reasonable alternative to traditional Japanese binchotan, at a much lower cost and much more convenient form factor. I like the generally square shape of the charcoal - makes it easy to fit in whatever you're using to cook with, and once you get an arrangement that works, it's easy to repeat over and over again. For example, I know that four pieces in my pizza over get me a pizza stone that hits 900 degrees every time...I don't need to experiment with odd-shaped pieces or anything like that. The hollow centers seem to help it burn consistently, too. I did have a difficult time getting the coals lit. Using a Weber starting chimney, it took about 45 minutes to get the coals up to temperature (for context, typical charcoal briquettes take 10-15 minutes to get going using the same technique). This seems to be a characteristic of this type of product and of binchotan itself. I have a high-temperature non-contact digital thermometer - it suggests that one burning, the surface of the coals reach about 1000 to 1200 degrees (F), and that's plenty hot enough for most uses. The coals themselves produced very little smoke or smell when burning. I stumbled across a YouTube video showing someone using these coals to grill indoors, but I would discourage that. There doesn't seem to be a lot of smoke from the coals themselves, but most any food you cook on them will tend to be just as smoky as when you cook outdoors. I tried grilling a single burger on a small hibachi indoors that I placed under my commercial range hood with the exhaust fan running at full speed - within about a minute, my smoke alarms were going and my kitchen was filled with smoke...I had to grab the hot hibachi and retreat outside. I did have good success firing my pizza oven with this charcoal. They burned for about three hours and my pizza stone made it to about 900 degrees with just four pieces of coal in the back of the oven. That's good performance, and pizza came out great. Overall, I'd say this is a nice product at a fair price, as long as you're not planning on using it indoors.

Bought for yakatori grill but now I use these for all my camping grilling and backyard grilling. They are harder to get going than store bought charcoal but once they are going they produce consistent and reliable heat for HOURS! Not just for yakatori. Changed my grilling game. I used them for grilling my tday turkey this year vs regular charcoal and my bbq required 10x less maintenance. I was able to set it and forget it for hours. For the last 20 years I had to monitor my turkey, add more charcoal and fan. I used them at the local parks standing metal bbq this summer for a party. You know, those old rusty BBQs they have at every park. No ash on food and everyone at the park BBQ was asking me questions and flabbergasted. I set up a small, flat row and a few bricks cooked 100 items for hours. The heat distribution cooked the middle amd edges the same. Quite the conversation piece and the talk of the party.

This stuff is great for Korean or Japanese bbq. I wouldn't use it to replace regular charcoal briquettes or lump charcoal. This is more for small gatherings around a grill and getting awesome seared meats. It's really low smoke so when you cook marinated meats it won't blow in your face and it's so hot that you can easily sear thin cuts of meat without over cooking. And this stuff lasts for at least 5 hours. 2 hours into cooking and there's still about 1/2 left. I'm actually going to save the rest for another time. One thing to note is this stuff is super, I mean super hard to start. I used my charcoal chimney and it barely did a dent. Only some corners were glowing. If you only have a charcoal chimney, you'll need to stack 2 layers of charcoal briquettes under, then lay this on top. This charcoal will help start the Thaan. After about 1/4 is started, flip it over. Then to get the center started, lay the charcoal out on the grill and lay the Thaan on top. It takes an hour or more to start this way. BUT if you have a gas grill, crank it to the max and lay this directly on top of the burners. About 10 min per side worked for me.

Wavered on giving this 3 or 4 stars, really it's about a 3.5 for me. I have a small (12.25 x 9") Japanese konro grill I use for yakitori, and decided I'd experiment a bit with this as compared to lump charcoal. These logs are very dense and seem to be extruded from a fine particulate wood, which gives it some interesting qualities I'll elaborate on. These do take a little more energy to get going than conventional lump charcoal. Not terrible though. With lump charcoal in a chimney I use two starter pellets and in 15 minutes it's ready to go. With this style charcoal my starters finished and it wasn't close to fully lit, so I went and burned some extra paper under the chimney and after maybe a total of 30 minutes it was good to go. Four "logs" fit in the bottom of the konro. For similar weight of charcoal that I'm used to burning (about 3/4 lb) this occupies much less volume and sits pretty low. Using another row of logs I think would have been too high up in the grill. In retrospect, I could have used a few small pieces of lump charcoal under these logs to space them up just a bit higher. As a positive, it doesn't smoke (though when grease or anything drips from what you're cooking you will of course get puffs of smoke) and it burns a long time. The ash however seems to be very fine, more so than lump charcoal. Seemed like any time grease or sauce would drip off my chicken skewers, a puff of that fine ash would come up with the smoke and swirl around my food - wasn't a fan of that. With maybe how low the logs were in the grill, seemed like things took longer to cook as well. If I were doing a long, several hour yakitori session with people, this might be a decent option. I'd probably put small pieces of lump charcoal at the bottom and then these logs on top, to get them a little closer to the food being cooked. That wouldn't be a bad use for this product, having consistent heat for a longer time. For me though, and just cooking for about an hour or so, I think I prefer lump charcoal. Lights faster, is a bit easier to arrange pieces to the desired height in my grill, and burns long enough to get the job done.

Wow, this stuff is awesome. It's a bit expensive to use as frequently as I BBQ, but I'll probably start using it on Competition weekends. It burns extremely consistent and extremely long. It also has a very high range, but was able to keep it low easily too. Did a big long test run with it today, and was able to get only 7 bricks so heat a Weber kettle on indirect for 16 hours. I had it at 400 for the first 30inutes while I dialed in the oxygen, then once I got it to my desired 275, it chilled there without almost any effort for the remainder of the time I tested it. It only started to dip in temperature just before 16 hours and is still (2 hours after I stopped keeping track, and just walked away from the grill) glowing a bit, and 2-3 small lumps remain. Very little Ash, and never was there a big beginning billow of smoke like you get with briquettes. Also imarts a really nice mild and unique flavor to meat. I had ribs on for 3 hours with only a light seasoning, and they were very tasty.

It delivers what's promised, long lasting high heat. I used it in my ceramic hibachi. For a single meal, I only used 2 pieces for 2 thick pork chops. It stayed red hot for 2 hours! I doused the embers with water ( outside the hibachi so it won't crack) and what's left of it can be reused. So much cheaper than binchotan. I used some wood chips soaked in water, wrapped in foil then puncture some holes . Lay it next to the burning embers for your desired smoky aroma.as this is smokeless. It takes a while to get it to burn but I had an AHA! moment. I placed a can of lit sterno under both bars of pokpok- than then forgot about it. In 30 minutes , it's going fairly well. No sweat !

Very good quality. I bought it for work, the charcoal last longer than other ordinary charcoal.

Buena calidad, quema lenta combustión con poco humo

Muy calientes y duran muchísimo (mas de 8 horas hasta que se apagaron completamente). Cuesta bastante encenderlos.