Is there an advantage to burning wood down to coals before adding it to your BBQ pit? If you are a “purist” with the art of low and slow…the answer is most definitely “Yes!” If you a BBQer with a regular “off the shelf” BBQ pit…the answer is most definitely “No.”

I will share a little anecdote….something that happened to us at a Memphis in May competition a few years back. Those of you who have been to Memphis in May or have seen videos, pictures, etc., of Tom Lee Park, know the close confines of the teams, cooking.

On this particular occasion, we were set up next to a team from Georgia. Great Guys! A lot of fun and what I would call “traditionalists”…their pit could best be described as a 250 gallon tank, homemade and configured to cook direct, i.e. coals on the bottom, with about a 3 foot gap between the meat and the coals. Off to one side of their pit, they had a burn barrel, in which they would burn hickory logs down to coals before adding them to their pit.

We were down wind from this affair, and by day 3, we were thoroughly “perfumed” with the spicey peppery smell afforded by hickory wood. It got to be a touch annoying when everywhere you turned in our site, you could not escape the pungent smoke coming at us from their direction.

Their method of burning down wood to coals is a practice used in much of the south, the mid-south, and the Carolinas. Usually a stationary brick pit is the cooker of choice. These brick pits which come in various forms, can be found in restaurants and backyards throughout the area.

In the early 50’s, backyard barbecuers, i.e. grilling stations, were as much a fad as the barrel cookers are today. The fuel for these backyard pits is usually charcoal…lump or briquettes. Raw wood, meaning unburnt wood, is seldom added because of the flame factor. That is where the good ole boys burn the wood first, and then add the coals. Those not wishing to take the time, will use the modern convenience of the aforementioned charcoals.

It can be argued, real old fashioned BBQ does not have added smoke, the only flavorings from the wood, coming from a very diluted coal base…from the burned down wood. It could also be argued, the taste of BBQ is decidedly different depending on which cooking method is used.

I am going to use the barrel cookers, think Weber bullets, UDS cookers, in this example. Charcoal is the primary fuel and wood chips or chunks are added to gain a smoke flavor. The flavor will be dependent, of course, on the choice of wood. My question is simply…Is this what BBQ was intended to be? Or what BBQ has evolved into? Would today’s wood smoked pork butts be recognizable as BBQ to the ghost of BBQ past if he were to visit a cook off or a backyard in today’s times?

Here is a typical brick BBQ pit in the south…notice the shoveling of coals.