NATURAL CHARCOAL

Roots Murphy was one of the first people we met here in Montserrat. Driving by his small roadside bar up in the north we noticed that someone on the beach opposite was digging a charcoal pit. Avid fans of natural charcoal for our barbecues, we asked around and were told to talk with Roots.

Not only did we talk with him, we spent a day with him loading the charcoal pit. Charcoal making has a long tradition in the Caribbean and it has been much maligned in recent years by environmentalists – cut trees are losses for the biosphere. We were happy to learn that Roots uses only wood from the clearing of land for construction which would otherwise be left to the termites or wood from trees killed by volcanic ash and mud flows from the Soufriere Volcano here in Montserrat.

Willow, mahogany, logwood and acacia are good woods for making charcoal especially the very hard acacia which makes excellent long burning charcoal and imparts a lovely flavor to foods cooked over it. Wood from bread fruit, mango and loblolly trees is not suitable for charcoal as it is either too soft or leaves a toxic residue in the charcoal.

When sufficient wood has been gathered it is put closely packed into a sixteen foot long by six foot wide pit dug in the sand. The wood is then covered with about a hundred very wet cement bags that have been soaked in water for two or three days. The next layer is made from sheets of old galvanized roofing tin. Finally six to eight inches of sand are shoveled on top along with large rocks to weight the covering down keeping out as much air as possible. At one end of the pit there is a small smoke stack. At the other end is another small hole dug down to the bottom edge of the pit. A fire is lighted in this hole with dry grass, twigs, and small pieces of wood. When smoke appears at the other end of the pit billowing from the stack, this hole too is closed off. The pit will burn for about five days and needs careful tending to insure that fire does not break through the covering. This happens sometimes and causes some of the wood in the pit to be lost to complete burning. It is believed that burning is always a problem during the full moon, so if at all possible this time is to be avoided. When done the pit will yield twenty feed bags of high quality natural charcoal.

These days, despite all the gas grills, charcoal is still popular for backyard barbecues, but on islands like Montserrat and in lesser developed parts of the world charcoal is fuel for everyday cooking. Its advantages over raw wood are many; two of the more important are its lightweight portability and its greatly reduced smoking, not to mention that it is safe from the voracious termites in warm climates which would polish off a woodpile in very short order.

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