Kingsford Charcoal - Good or Bad?

Outdoor grilled food is enjoyed by just about everyone from all walks of life. Most of these people would agree that cooking over charcoal produces the best tasting meals.

Growing up, my father used Kingsford. It's what I bought in college and whenever I cooked with charcoal. Since I can remember, Kingsford charcoal has been the standard and considered the premium brand available in stores. Many backyard chefs would contend that the Kingsford brand is the best available.

However, the purests/connaisseurs would regard Kingsford as inferior - in fact, many consider it a crappy product. They contend Kingsford puts in too much filler and too many other additives incorporated into the mixture to make them fast lighting, high heat and/or long burning.

So who is right?

Truth be told, you can't have everything. There are four primary qualities of a briquette and each are inter-dependent: ease of lighting, temperature output, duration of burn and, of course, flavor. Tweak the composition of a briquette to affect one of these qualities, and you'll also affect one or more of the others. Add too much sodium nitrate (used to make briquettes light more easily) and the briquette doesn't burn as long. Add more filler to make them burn longer and you alter the taste and/or produce more ash (another quality important to some). Etc., etc.

So Kingsford makes charcoal briquettes much like Budweiser makes beer. (Or like Nabisco makes crackers, etc., etc.). They mass produce a product that has been designed to appeal to the mainstream consumer. It's a good product, but maybe not great according to many measures. In this case, Kingsford has perfected a formula that balances the qualities that cosumers want from a briquet. These aren't products that are going to satisfy everyone - so they aim at the largest population.

Is there anything wrong with that? No, not really. We as consumers are content to compromise what we want, as long as we get what we expect. So is Kingsford charcoal good or bad? It depends on what you're expecting. It also depends on what your options are, so as will most products, it's a relative thing.