How to Use a Charcoal Chimney Starter

So you’ve purchased a charcoal barbecue or smoker, prepared your meal, and all that remains is to light the embers.

Should be pretty straightforward, right?

So many individuals make mistakes here before they even leave the gate. To get the coals ignited fast, the uninformed pitmaster would often douse their coals with lighter fluid.

You don’t want that smoky petroleum flavor in your cuisine!

Fortunately, owing to the creative but simple-to-use charcoal chimney starter, you don’t have to rely on chemical fire starters or lighter fluid. This small gadget is so useful that we had to include it on our list of must-have smoker accessories.

A chimney lighter is the easiest way to ignite your charcoal since it is both safe and straightforward to use. You’ll never use anything else after seeing how simple it is to use.

What is a Chimney Starter and how does it work?

A chimney starter is a metal cylinder with a grate towards the bottom and a number of air vents throughout the length of the chimney.

The chimney starter works by sucking air up from the bottom of the chimney and igniting the briquettes or lump charcoal lying on top of the grate. Within 15 minutes, you should be ready to cook.

A heat shield on the same side as the handle protects you (but you should still wear gloves while dumping out the coals or lifting the chimney).

They are available in a variety of forms and sizes and can be bought at most outdoor or general shops.

We utilize this roundWeber model that we purchased from Amazon.

How to use a charcoal chimney starter

The best approach to ignite charcoal using a chimney starter is determined on the sort of cooking you want to undertake.

Before you get started, make sure you have:

• Close-toed shoes and heat-resistant gloves. Fortunately, this has never happened to me, but the people at virtuaweberbullet warn that hot charcoal may fall out of the bottom of the chimney onto the terrace and land on your bare or flip-flopped foot. Ouch.

• There is an abundance of high-quality charcoal briquettes or lump charcoal. We like to use high-quality charcoal, such as Kingsford blue.
• When you’re finished, use a pair of long barbeque tongs to arrange your coals.

1. Using a chimney starter when cooking low and slow

We invert the chimney so that the air vents are at the top if you’re planning to cook low and slow using the minion technique or one of its variants like the Donut or the Fuse. That leaves just enough room to get your smoker going.

We don’t need a whole chimney to cook since these techniques just need a small number of lighted coals to be put on top of a vast pile of unlit coals.

The entire thing may then be placed on top of a non-petroleum-based fire starter (we like wooden ones) or simply some scrunched-up paper.

You may even shred up portion of the bag and compress it into a ball to get the most out of your charcoal purchase.

This is the method we often use while cooking on the Weber Smokey Mountain.

2. Using a chimney starter for grilling or smoking hot

The upright approach, which you’ve definitely seen on YouTube, involves placing the chimney upright. Then you fill it almost to the brim with charcoal and set both the fire source and the chimney starter on the grate of your standard charcoal barbecue.

The flame from the starting cubes or shredded newspaper is pulled up via the chimney of the chimney starter to work its way through the coals, allowing air circulation to supply heat to the charcoal.

Both approaches are the same once you know which way you’re cooking:

1. Place the chimney on a safe, heat-resistant surface.
2. Pour in the required quantity of charcoal. If you don’t want to cook for a long time, simply fill it halfway. Experiment here to avoid wasting charcoal.
3. Place your preferred fire starting (newspaper, old paper, non-patriotic fire starters, or even the gas burner) near the chimney.
4. Light it, then position the chimney so that it is directly above the heat.
5. This should take between ten and fifteen minutes, depending on the weather. When the coals at the very top of the starter begin to turn little grey or ashen from the heat below, they are ready.
6. When the top coals are suitably ashy, gently dump the coals onto the grill or smoker and set for your preferred grilled heat source, whether direct or indirect.
7. Wear gloves since this technique might generate a lot of sparks.

To see this in action, we strongly suggest T-ROY COOKS, who runs an incredible barbeque YouTube channel.

Take all essential safety steps to avoid completely burning down your home. While the majority of the heat is securely confined inside the chimney, it may produce a lot of smoke and the flames can reach outside, so leave plenty of space around you.

Naturally, you want to ensure that the surface is sturdy and cannot be simply pushed over. You don’t want an inferno of hot coals to erupt on your patio!

Once the coals have been poured from the chimney starting and arranged to your desire, place the starter someplace secure and out of the way. It should cool reasonably fast once removed from the heat source, but it may still represent a risk to any visitors or unwitting friends or family that come into contact with it if not securely stored. Visit Charcoal Grilled Char Siu BBQ Pork for more detail.

Chimney starter tips

• The first lighting of the chimney starter requires no lighter fluid. In fact, it is highly advised that no lighter fluid be used, since the starter’s chimney design can rapidly intensify the intensity of the flame, potentially causing catastrophic fire damage.
• When using shredded newspaper or another kind of kindling to ignite your chimney starting, if the top coals have not yet begun to turn grey after fifteen minutes, check to ensure that the fire underneath the starter has not gone out. Light a second fire if required, and continue until the top coals are suitably grey. This has occurred to me many times while employing the low and slow approach because there was insufficient heat created to reach up the chimney.
• When manipulating the coals, raking them over your grill, or igniting the starting cubes or kindling under your chimney starter, use tongs or a long match.
• You may observe little flames around the top of your chimney starter after the top coals have begun to turn grey.This is typical, and it’s another sign that your coals are ready to use!
• The only way to fire your charcoal is using a chimney starter. We have compiled a list of the greatest charcoal lighting tools.

Once you’ve used a charcoal chimney starter to start your smoker or grill, you’ll never use another way again. Please share any other suggestions for utilizing a chimney starter in the comments section below.