Grill Maestro

The latest Cook’s Illustrated reviewed four chimney starters. Chimney starters are cylindrical canisters that you can use to quickly start a charcoal fire. You stick the charcoal briquettes in a top chamber, stuck in some newspaper, and light it. The cylinder traps in a lot of the flame and heat so that much of the energy in burning up the newspaper is used to heat up the charcoal. With most chimney starters, you’re twenty minutes away from getting your charcoal ready for grilling.

The primary appeal of chimney starters is that they’re safer than using lighter fluid, simply because you don’t use any flammable liquids. Another reason they’re appealing is because you don’t ever get any residual lighter fluid cooked into your food, since you never use it. We all know the smell of too much lighter fluid and chimney starters prevent that.

I was surprised to see them review four different starters because I thought a chimney starter was a chimney starter. How complicated can you really get? Well, it turns out that there are some designs that perform better than others. Fortunately Cook’s Illustrated reviewed four and were able to select a winner.

They looked at the Weber Rapid Fire Chimney Starter, the Lodge Camp Dutch Oven Charcoal Chimney Starter, Outset Stainless Steel Chimney, and the GrillPro Charcoal Starter. They highly recommended the Weber Rapid Fire Chimney Starter, which happened to be the cheapest at $14.95. The Lodge Camp, priciest at $25.46, was recommended with reservations (smaller capacity and fewer air circulation holes meant heating coals took 4 minutes longer). The Outset, at $22.46, was deemed too flimsey and the GrillPro’s finish melted from the heat, which took 27 minutes to heat the coals.

Here’s what they said about the Weber Rapid Fire:

Holds just enough charcoal (6 quarts) to handle the frequent grilling applications that require high heat. A design feature testers did appreciate was a second handle, which made for easier-to-control coal distribution. In the end, the no-frills Weber was adequate for most grill sizes.

Cheapest chimney starter beats out the competition? Sounds like a winner to me.

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