basics of charcoal grilling

Cooking on a barbeque grill can be great and rewarding and a great thing to do on a great summer's evening.  But before we get ahead of ourselves, a look at the basics is required to make sure that we are on the right track.  While it seems pretty easy at first blush, there are definitely some nuances to make your day out next to the grill a great experience. 

When you get to the grocery store you are bombarded these days with how many choices there are.  The plain briquettes that you parents used, the fancy new easy light charcoal, charcoal that is impregnated with mesquite and other ingredients, the kind that you light the bag and it in turn lights the charcoal, and so on.  The list seems endless...  I'm a firm believer in keeping thing easy, and i'm guessing since you are here reading a "basic of charcoal grilling" hub that you aren't in to all the crazy and fancy charcoal.  I would stick with the tried and true charcoal that has been around for a long time now. To start it I would use either some of your own purchased starter fluid or preferrably a charcoal chimney.  I will explain what a charcoal chimney is below.

While using starter fluid is the norm for most people, an easier and cheaper in the long run method is the charcoal chimney.  Allowing you to use old newspaper (who doesn't have a ton of that lying around) to light your charcoal with.  Really the process is simple.  Check out the video to the right, but basically it involves loosely crumpling some newspaper in the bottom of the chimney, loading up the top portion with the charcoal briquettes and lighting the newspaper.  Let the chimney smoke for about 10 minutes.  You want to see the fire flaring up through the top of the chimney and the charcoal is burning red hot with some white powder on some of the coals.  Using a glove grab the chimney and turn it over so that the coals are in a pile in the center of the charcoal grill.

As a general rule you want to use 25-30 briquettes per one pound of meat you are planning on cooking.  So if you are planning on making hamburgers for your 8 closest friends and that involves cooking 2 pounds of meat then you would need 50-60 charcoal briquettes.

So what about the vent covers for the charcoal grill?  Just remember that fire always needs an oxygen source, so to that end we need to have the vents open to allow for the coals to continue burning.  That being the case make sure that when you start grilling that both the top and bottom vents are open.  If during grilling the coals are too hot you can close them slightly, but unless you are planning on extinguishing the coals never close them completely.  Also, only put the top of the grill cover on when you are cooking.  Other than that always keep everything open.

As can be seen, grilling doesn't have to be hard or too time consuming.  Follow the easy tips above to have a great time using a charcoal grill to cook great summer time food.