How to start a charcoal fire with “fire-starters” – Your basic guide.

I’m New at This!

The majority of people that come to see me at our little shop in Leichhardt in Sydney, will admit that they have never started a charcoal fire before and ask the question where to begin. You may think how hard can it be right, but the reality is that many of us get it wrong on our first go. Only through trial and error do you find the little tricks and smart ways to start a charcoal fire, but many of us prefer the quick start “lets hurry” rather than giving it time for the fire to be ready. I hope I can explain here that its not that hard and worth the reward in the end if you plan ahead.

What Do I Need?

Well you need some good dry charcoal and some fire starters – I’ll talk about the basic and simplest way to starting a charcoal fire as not to confuse the newbies that are reading this. Good charcoal must be in decent pieces no bigger than the palm of your hand and be free of any chemical or organic smell. For beginners, the easiest charcoal to use would be the ones that look branch like. You can find in Australia, Indonesian Mangrove tree charcoal available that is easy to light and leaves very little residue or “pot ash” in the end. For the purpose of demonstration here, the images shown is me using Australian Redgum charcoal and due to the size of pieces, can be a little hard to start.

What is a Fire Starter?

These days you can buy fire starters at your local supermarket in packs of 32 or 36 cubes in a box and they can be chemical or natural. In a nutshell these are solid fuel cubes that you break apart and can be easily lit by a match. The best way to use these is to break 3 to 4 cubes from the packet and place them in (not on the surface) the charcoal. I would create a space in the charcoal and put in a line of fire starters, then lightly cover them with larger chunks of charcoal but being careful not to completely cover them. What you have to watch out for is not to smother or suffocate the fire starters, so remember to leave some space for the fire to breath once lit.

What Do I do Whilst I’m Waiting?

So your charcoal is in the BBQ and the fire starters have been lit and burning away for the next 10 minutes or so. Time to get your meats ready! This is what I meant when I said plan ahead. My routine, once I have the fire starters going, is to go inside and start rubbing my meats with a mixture of herbs including salt and pepper and placing them into bowls. Then work on cutting up the salad or putting the potatoes in the oven – or just sitting down to have a drink. I give myself 20 minutes before I go back out to check the BBQ. Of course you still have to keep an eye out on the BBQ in that time just in case.

OK the Fire Starters have gone out – What Now? 

If you done it right, you should have a patch of charcoal glowing red and forming white ash over their surface. There should be no smoke or smell present and you have a few options – You can accelerate the rest of the charcoal to be ignited by “fanning”  either by a piece of cardboard or blowing or leave it to grow at its own rate. At this point most of the charcoal is well alight and I like to add a few more lumps of charcoal on top to catch on, knowing that in the next 20 minutes it would be still as hot. At this point you simply move around the glowing pieces so that heat is easily radiating to all areas of the grill. The hot charcoal will simply ignite the rest.

How Long will it be Hot for?

Most charcoal at this point will burn at its highest for at least 10 minutes depending on how big the clumps are and then slowly decrease in temperature for the next 10 to 15 minutes. That’s plenty of time to cook a 3cm thick steak to well-done. Remember that large charcoal clumps hold more heat and will last longer than smaller ones. Small pieces of charcoal would not burn as hot and will have a tenancy to loose heat quickly. Once you have finished cooking, the charcoal will still be quite hot and depending on how large the pieces are, can continue to burn for a few hours more. You can shovel them into a metal bucket of water to put out, but probably easier to let it burn out in the BBQ and clean it out the next day.