While researching videos on using the ceramic kamado style smokers like the Big Green Egg, Kamado Joe and Vision Kamado we came across some interesting ways to start the fire in the charcoal or wood at the base of smokers.
In the bullet style, vertical smokers as well as the horizontal smokers many people use a chimney starter. These are very inexpensive and do a good job of starting charcoal.
Another common type of fire starter is an electric starter. Electric starters are nice and simple to use but you must have an electricity source near your smoker.
You also don’t want to ever get distracted and “forget” about the electric fire starter. It’s not very forgiving as you might imagine.
Another way to start the fire is to use a propane or butane torch. There are number of different heads for the torches. The one we’ve used lately is the Benzomatic trigger start style along with a camp sized propane bottle.
This is an easy way to light the chimney starter as well as a couple of charcoal briquettes but it’s not very good for starting a whole pan of charcoal.
The more interesting fire starters are the ones that are used for the ceramic smokers. With the kamado smokers you have to reach down into the ceramic basin to start the fire. While you can use the methods listed above, there are some other approaches that use propane in interesting ways.
Tools like the Propane Turbo Torch make life interesting by pushing the flame out of the end of the long nozzle. Just think, when you’re done starting the smoker you can burn weeds away in your yard.
The propane torches are really useful in that they keep your body parts out of the smoker while you’re starting the fire and reduce the changes of injury.
Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the lowly fat wood fire starters. These are not generally useful for smokers or grills but they are super for starting wood stove or camp fire type fires – particularly when used together with one of the propane smokers above.
Whatever method you use, be careful! Enjoy your smoking and grilling adventures![phpzonsidebar keywords=”fire starters” num=”10″ country=”US” trackingid=”kckcocom-20″ id=”2″]