Michael Rand, North London allotment gardener, makes 'the beautiful black stuff' for barbecues...
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| Michael Rand: allotment gardener
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'Avoid all sawn, processed and treated timber, and anything rotten. Apart from these, you can chark any native hardwood sticks, 2 to 5cm (1-2in) in diameter, and up to about 20cm (8in) long.'
August is now with us and at this time of year, weather permitting, there's no greater pleasure to be had in the vegetable garden or on the allotment than crunching a sultry, leisurely evening away with a giant home-grown salad, accompanied by a few scorched burgers (veggie or otherwise) and your beverage of choice. So – assuming you're not an Australian, i.e. a person who mistakenly barbecues their burgers with bottled gas – it's time to get hold of a sack or two of charcoal.
Where from? This is not a difficult question to answer since practically every petrol station, supermarket and garden centre at this season will be stocked up, often with cheap charcoal derived from tropical forests. Not exactly eco-friendly, for sure. And while home-charked, eco-friendly stuff has become available recently, this tends not to be on the cost-effective side. What to do? This question is a tad less easy to answer, but by no means impossible. Make your own.
In days of yore, charcoal-making was the province of a curious breed of sooty specialists who slept under heaps of leaves in a wood, and who spent all their waking hours constructing miniature mountains of timber and wrapping them in turf. Nowadays, in our chuck-out society, there's no need whatever to sacrifice personal hygiene and comfort in such a fashion. All you need to do is to find yourself an old metal oil drum and turn it into a charcoal kiln.
Creating the kiln
Once you've found your drum, and cleaned out the inside as best you can, here's what to do with it (or, if you're not the practical type, here's what you get your best practical friend to do):
Working inside the rim on the flat end, cut the bottom out using an electric jig saw or angle grinder. Leave two opposing curved flanges poking out, so that the cut piece, which will form the lid, looks in shape – somewhat like a biscuit with a minor bite taken out of each side. Then:
Turn the drum the other way up (the bung end) and punch some more holes in it with a cold chisel. Then:
File off all sharp edges.
Making charcoal with hardwood sticks
So much for the kiln, what about the contents? Avoid all sawn, processed and treated timber, and anything rotten. Apart from these, you can chark any native hardwood sticks, 2 to 5cm (1-2in) in diameter, and up to about 20cm (8in) long.
Having sorted out your kiln and got hold of some suitable sticks, the actual charcoal making is the easy part. Stand the kiln on three bricks and light a fire in the bottom of it using paper or dry twigs. Once a fiery blaze has been burning for 20 minutes, fill the rest of the kiln up with your sticks. At this point it will start to produce copious white smoke, after about 40-50 minutes of which, put the lid on top, resting it on the two flanges, with the two 'bites' in the lid acting as chimneys to release the smoke.
Burn, seal and leave
A charcoal burn on this scale takes four hours, more or less, and you'll know when it's done because the thick white smoke will have changed to a thin blue colour. At which stage heap soil all around the base, also on top of the lid, carefully tamping and wetting down to cut off the air supply into the kiln totally. Once it's sealed, simply leave until the next day to cool, then dismantle. Et voilą! Lashings of The (cheap and completely eco-friendly) beautiful black stuff to scorch your burgers with!
About the author
Michael Rand tends an allotment in North London and is the author of
Close to the Veg: a book of allotment tales, price £10.99, published by Marlin Press.
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