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Once upon a time, I owned a gas grill. I found it on my street with a “FREE, WORKS” sign on it. Needless to say, it was not one of Epi’s recommended models. I was 24, sharing a house with three roommates, and still in the “I bought my pans at the grocery store in the aisle that also has cat litter” phase of my cooking life. The grill was fine. It heated up fast, and it was easy to use, which was a feature I prized above all others. The igniter didn’t work, but I could get it to turn on by holding a lighter to the burner. When I left that house, I left the gas grill behind, trading it for that most ubiquitous backyard cooker: the Weber kettle. I’m not going to get into the merits of charcoal versus gas here—I’ll just say I’ve never spoken to a professional griller who thinks gas can hold a flame to charcoal. The swap felt like a massive upgrade to me.
With the kettle in the yard, I thought I’d master charcoal cooking. Dreams of spatchcocked chickens and smoky pork shoulders danced in my head. But that grill sat sad and mostly idle for years. I’d been warned off lighter fluid or instant-lighting charcoal briquettes for the chemical tastes they leave, and building a fire and waiting for it to burn the charcoal into a state of readiness felt agonizingly slow and laborious—it certainly did not feel like something I could do on the regular.
Then one day, only because it was on a clearance shelf, I got a charcoal chimney starter; I didn’t even know how to use it at the time. But it changed my grill from a piece of lawn furniture into something I could use every week.
A charcoal chimney starter is a simple little thing: a metal tube with a grate near the bottom to hold charcoal off the ground and a number of holes in it to allow air to flow through freely. Fill the chimney starter with charcoal. Stick some paper, a tumbleweed, or a starter cube on the charcoal grate of your grill and set it ablaze, then place the chimney on top of the starter. About 15 minutes later (or, about the amount of time it currently takes my oven to preheat to 425°F) the chimney will be filled with graying coals that are ready to use. Just don’t wait too long before you dump your coals. Dustin Green, head grill master for Weber, told me you’ll actually end up losing fuel and heat that way. “If you wait until they’re all the way ashed over, you’re going to lose half your chimney when you go to dump it. It’s already burnt up and done.”
The science behind the chimney is simple. Because the charcoal is raised above the starter, “the air will come from underneath it and then filter through to the top,” Green explains, keeping the fire well oxygenated. And because the charcoal is packed together in a more compact space, one piece can help light another, and then another, more quickly.
That short prep time was the transformational feature for me. Being able to strike a match and walk away, fully confident that by the time I was done shaping some burger patties the coals would be ready, turned my grill into an extension of my kitchen. It became the place I cooked chicken for Tuesday night tacos, a way to simply prepare vegetables, and (this is big for me) a way to have fewer pans to clean up later.
Green loves chimney starters for more than the speed factor; he loves that this method gives you clear signs that it’s time to cook. “The chimney starter is kind of talking to you, telling you what it’s doing. It starts out with a dark gray smoke that lightens up and then goes away. You don’t have to stand there and stare at it. You can see that if it’s smoking, it’s not ready.”
Even with a chimney starter, lighting a charcoal grill is neither as clean or quite as fast as my upcycled gas grill of years past—but it’s as easy and clear as lighting your own fire gets. And I wouldn’t trade the smoky flavor it produces, even for a functional igniter button.
