I am a definite fan of charcoal instead of gas grills. I mean, much of the point of grilling is to infuse food with the smoke taste from carbonized hardwoods. With gas, you may as well just use the broiler on an indoor gas stove; it doesn’t taste much different. Also, as Alton Brown will tell you, burning propane produces water vapor; water vapor creates a barrier between meat and smoke. Finally, storing or using gas grills on patios or balconies is verboten under New Jersey Uniform Fire Code (charcoal grills aren’t mentioned)…but I digress.
Anyway, you just grab the chimney thing, shove some wadded-up newspapers in the base, set it on a cement patio, fill it to the top with charcoal, and shove a lit Zippo torch into the holes. The paper catches fire, but doesn’t blow out in the wind. Then the heat inside the cylinder keeps building and building, the coals getting hotter and hotter. After about a half-hour, they are plenty ashed-over and glowing, so I tip the canister over, and dump the hot coals into my grill and start grilling.
Advantage? No need to squirt lighter-fluid all over the carefully arranged collapsing pyramid of coals, wait for the flame to get blown out, then squirt more lighter fluid on, as you hover over the grill trying to keep it lit. This is like that Ronco rotisserie—“set it and forget it.” The newspaper ashes stay separate from the coals and separate from the food. Also, the food then tastes like charcoal smoke, not lighter fluid (of course, avoid the charcoal with infused lighter fluid; you don’t need it).
Luke from Gilmore Girls may have dismissed the charcoal chimney as a “gadget” the season before last, but consider the source—this is the guy who drove Lorelei into the arms of another man… Uh, not that I watch Gilmore Girls or anything, I just caught glimpses of it while channel-surfing between professional wrestling and Tuesday Night Football.
