The first requirement for successful grilling is a hot fire. While a few experienced cooks may scoff at a discussion of how to light a charcoal grill, we all remember a day when we lost our eyebrows due to a flare-up, or spent hours trying to coax a smoldering fire while our guests ate chips and lost all interest in the food. There hundreds of great recipes out there, but none of them will work if we haven’t got a fire. This is the most basic and critical of all grilling tips, so let’s get started.
A time honored approach for how to light a charcoal grill that is rapidly gaining a richly deserved obsolescence is the charcoal-starter method. It involves plain dry charcoal and a petroleum based accelerant that is squirted on and then ignited. This is the method most likely to get your eyebrows blown off, and we don’t use it anymore around here.
The first big advance over that method came with the “self-lighting” charcoal brands like Kingsford and Royal Oak. In exchange a premium price, the charcoal comes pre-saturated with liquid accelerant. This prevents flare-ups and lights the charcoal evenly and quickly. While it is the preferred method of occasional grill cooks learning how to light a charcoal grill, it too has its drawbacks. First, as with the original method, all accelerants must burn off completely before grilling can begin or the food will taste sooty and oily. Second, the charcoal may not store well, because the accelerant will begin to evaporate as soon as the bag is opened.
The best method we have found so far is to use a “chimney” starter. These devices are marketed by such companies as Lodge and Weber. They are basically a short, wide metal cylinder with two chambers and a handle. Plain charcoal, not the “self-lighting” variety, goes into the upper, larger chamber and a couple of sheets of crumpled newspaper into the lower. Then just light the newspaper, set the chimney on top of the grill, and watch. When the charcoal is well lit, just pick the chimney up by its handle and dump the contents into the bottom of the grill. Important note: do not use “self-lighting” charcoal with a chimney or you may soon have a conflagration that is too hot to handle. And that’s all there is to know about how to light a charcoal grill!