Choices......

First off let me say that you never, ever want to cook authentic bbq with briquette charcoal, you always want to use lump charcoal whether from the bag (can get expensive) or burning them down yourself in a furnace of some sort. Grilling on the other hand.......which is a completely different cooking process than the process of barbecue......is fine to use briquettes because the high heat burns off the impurities. I used the briquettes here because thats all I had on hand to illustrate to you what a coal basket is and does. You light a very small amount of coals and put them butted up on one end then fill the rest of the basket with unlit lump charcoal or wood (depending on your cooker). This basket you see here has been burning since 10:00 this morning and its now almost 2:00.....thats almost 4 hours with NO restriction on the airflow around it (obviously burns faster when the fire has access to all the air it wants). When this is put in a cooker with restrictive airflow intake you can get between 7-10 hours of burn time (depending on the seasons) without your temp moving hardly at all......which enables you to either sleep or make sweet love to your woman all night long, which ever you prefer that particular night in which you are cooking.....choices baby, choices! This design is for the Ole' Hickory model I'll be cooking on.......I am used to cooking on what we call an "off-set" or "stickburner". You want your basket to be in an "S" type shape for those so it will fit the square fire box.