I Have Not Been Paid for This Endorsement. Yet.
For years I dithered over whether to switch to gas or stay with my Weber charcoal grill. While I found myself seduced by the convenience and quickness of propane and propane accessories, I was reluctant to abandon the smoky flavors imparted by charcoal (I want to taste the meat and the heat). The drawback of charcoal grilling — and I’m not talking about entertaining; I’m talking about cooking a weeknight dinner for four — is that it takes a fair amount of work and planning for what amounts to 10-15 minutes of actual cooking.
I never use Kingsford products or anything with the word “briquette” on the bag for the same reason I never use lighter fluid: it makes your food taste toxic. With Kingsford Match Light, you might as well pour kerosene over your steak, and even their Regular Charcoal includes borax, nitrate, and lime, according to this article. I only use pure carbonized wood, usually mesquite, but the result was a laborious fire-making ritual of tipis and false starts every time I wanted to grill a slice of meat.
Enter Alton Brown. During an episode about searing fish, he introduced me to the Weber Rapidfire Chimney Starter, a product I can’t recommend highly enough. You fill the top with charcoal, wad some liberal media in the bottom, light the paper with a single match, and within minutes you have red-hot coals (Brown advised spritzing the newspapers with olive oil but I found it only makes a lot of smoke while retarding the actual ignition). Once the coals start to gray, you overturn the starter and dump them into the grill. A few more minutes of graying and you’re ready to cook.
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Alexbbq
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Baylen
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Outdoor Gas Grills
