How To Light A Charcoal Chimney Starter

A chimney starter offers an easy way to light charcoal for barbecuing.

How to light a charcoal chimney starter. Learn how to use a charcoal chimney by first piling the top with charcoal briquettes. Convection sucks the flame up the canister and will light all the coals. The fire from the cubes will begin burning the. A charcoal chimney is traditionally used to light charcoal briquettes before adding them into a charcoal grill or smoker.

Whether bought or created you now have your charcoal starter. Set the lighter cubes on the charcoal grate and light them. For more information on charcoal charcoal starters and the charcoal chimney starter see the fire pit and grilling guru all about charcoal page which includes a video of using a charcoal chimney. Instead use a chimney starter basically a metal cylinder with a handle which you can purchase for as little as 9 but most tend to run anywhere from 15 20.

Lighter fluid may be a surefire way to get the charcoal going but it also gives off smelly fumes that can mess with the flavor of your food. Adhering to a few simple rules will allow you to light your grill with only charcoal lighter fluid and paper scraps and without the time and fuss of preparing a chimney starter. In fact you might find it easier to start your grill without the use of a chimney starter. The grate or mesh in the chimney prevents the charcoal from escaping and typically has an upward bend to it which creates a little tent of briquettes when looking up into a full chimney.

A simple and time honored tradition of lighting the coals in the charcoal chimney is wadding up sheets of newspaper into a ball and then placing them under the bottom of the chimney. Light the paper with a match at multiple points. The desired amount of charcoal is placed into the top of the cylinder and a small fire is started. It consists of an open ended metal cylinder with a charcoal grate mounted inside toward the bottom.

Using leftover charcoal in a chimney starter.