Saving Money: Lighting Charcoal Grill Efficiently

Reader Contribution by Caleb Regan and Managing Editor
Published on September 30, 2010
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I’ve blogged in the past about being a charcoal guy, about my love for cooking outside over Kingsford briquettes – be it smoking a pork butt or grilling chicken. What I didn’t share at the time was a major way I conserve charcoal. 

My brother went gas a year or so back; I think he was at a furniture store and they had a nice gas grill for cheap, so he went with it. And, at first, everything was great and he praised the quick-light feature, ease of the process and affordability of propane. 

However, grease fires started burning some of his meat as the grill aged, sufficiently so that now he’s again talking about going back to charcoal. The only real knock on charcoal in my eyes – coming from a guy who cooks about 50 percent of his meals over charcoal, and not much less than 50 percent during winter – is that the charcoal gets pricey. 

In and of itself, it’s not too bad, but when I’m using original briquettes – I hate the idea of the match-start briquettes being packed with chemicals – the lighting and extinguishing of the fire is where I lose most of my cost. Think about it, how much time is the meat actually above the fire? On burgers, it’s around 8 minutes a side, so that’s 16 minutes total to cook my food for that meal. 

In my younger days, I used some form of charcoal lighter fluid, and I still will if I’m in a pinch. Contrary to some people’s experiences, my food doesn’t ever taste like lighter fluid. However, I always error on the side of burning the Phenol distillates off way to much – it’s my way of being absolutely positive my food won’t taste like chemicals. When you do this, and I’m talking letting the briquettes turn grey, you lose a lot of an expensive cooking resource (the briquettes). 

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