The Best Charcoal for Grilling of 2026

There's a lot to like about Rockwood charcoal, which is why it smoked its way through our tests.

First, all the wood is harvested with eco-friendliness in mind, and is taken from leftover timber. This mixture is made entirely of Missouri oak, maple, and hickory. We also like how uniformly the charcoal chunks were hewed. The plank-like shape allows you to pack quite a bit into a grill chimney.

We did find it was harder to light than the Royal Oak, which is why it didn't take the top spot. The Rockwood charcoal required two attempts. Originally, we wanted to chalk this up to the 18 mph wind, but two other charcoals we tested that day lit up just fine under the same conditions.

Once the coals were lit, the Rockwood shined, and the smoke smelled like a campfire with a hint of sweetness. We lit up 2.1 pounds of charcoal and it cooked our burgers in 11 minutes.

There's a lot of love out there for Rockwood among grilling enthusiasts. It's even the Naked Whiz's highest user-rated charcoal. You’ll probably impress grill nerds by getting this well-regarded charcoal, but you’ll also pay an above-average price for it.

Jealous Devil proved itself to be useful if you’re looking for a charcoal of convenience. The zip lock bag is the first feature you'll notice, allowing for a no-fuss, no-muss access to the charcoal without having to rip a bag open.

Upon opening the bag, we saw a very uniform lump size, with few large chunks. Plus, we also noted a lack of useless dust and annoying chips.

During testing, we found that Jealous Devil was one of the hottest burning charcoal options in the roundup. In just six minutes our burger was cooked to medium-rare. As we grilled our burgers, we noticed that Jealous Devil had a unique-smelling smoke that to us smelled almost medicinal.

A little research revealed that Jealous Devil is made from Quebracho Blanco, a South American tree known for its hardness. Fortunately, the unusual odor did not translate to an off-putting taste.

If you're looking for a way to get a quick meal, you can't go wrong with this Amazon's Choice charcoal.

When it came to the Fogo Super Premium we had to make a tough decision. So much so, that we created additional testing just to get a better sense of how this charcoal performs.

First off, the Super Premium is large chunks only. Having only huge pieces of carbon made it harder to light, but translated to high heat and a long burn. It also jacked up the price—the Fogo is more than double the price per pound than the Royal Oak.

Expenses aside, our testing showed that the Fogo excelled when it comes to versatility. On a large charcoal grill, a high heat source allows you to boil water, use a Dutch oven, or, in our case, roast marshmallows.

We know most people won’t move their entire kitchen outdoors, which is why we decided not to award it a top spot even though the Fogo Super Premium displayed some impressive numbers. For camping and hardcore grilling, where you’re slow cooking a lot of food the Fogo may be the way to go.

Royal Oak Briquettes landed in the middle of the pack. We had more trouble lighting them than other briquettes in this roundup, which is surprising because the bag advertises that it "starts faster." It took a total of about 11 minutes to cook up our quarter-pounders. That puts in slightly below average compared to other briquettes.

We really can't gripe too much. A shopping trip online showed us that this is one of the more affordable charcoals out there. On the plus side, the briquettes still carry sweet notes like the lumps.

Cowboy Brand charcoal landed pretty low on the list because it didn't show consistent quality. Going through the bag, we found bits of wood that didn't look fully charred. Think of it like charcoal that's underdone or raw.

We looked online and found plenty of reviews of people finding plastic, rocks, and uncharred wood in their bags.

When we did assemble about four pounds of good lumps, we were underwhelmed. It cooked burgers in nine minutes and produced a smoke that wasn't memorable. Even though our experience was unremarkable for the most part, we cannot discount the number of negative reviews.

Kingsford Matchlight came in last in our roundup. It's not terrible, just terrible-smelling. We assumed from the outset that having a lump of charcoal doused in lighter fluid was a bad idea, but we had to know for sure.

Because we wanted to keep our methods consistent, we disregarded the instructions to light the briquettes in the grill and placed the Matchlight into our chimney. The end result was a pillar of flames nearly 3 ft. tall.

We like things en fuego but that's a little too much. Matchlight's chemical smell did get in our food. Perhaps it was just stuck in our noses, but either way, we did not enjoy our experience with this charcoal.