What’s the best way to Light Charcoal? My dad always used Lighter Fluid.

So did my dad, and we often ate steaks that reeked of petroleum by-products. It’s not that I’m totally against lighter fluid, but many grillers today prefer to avoid the risk of petroleum by-products entirely and use a chimney starter to light the coals instead.

A chimney starter is a device of elegant simplicity—an upright metal tube or box that is roughly six inches wide and has a wire or slotted partition in the center and a heatproof handle. You place lump charcoal or briquettes in the top of the chimney starter and a crumpled sheet of newspaper or a paraffin fire starter (this looks like a waxy white ice cube; one brand of paraffin starter is manufactured by Weber) in the bottom. Place the chimney starter on the bottom grate of a charcoal grill and light the newspaper or fire starter. In about twenty minutes, you’ll have a chimney full of uniformly lit coals. The chimney starter has three advantages over the traditional lighter fluid method.