The Best Charcoal Starter, The Weber Charcoal Chimney
If you’re in the market for a great charcoal starter, there is no reason to look any further than the Weber charcoal chimney.
The Weber brand chimney is my favorite and it lasts longer than the cheaper models. A Weber chimney holds about about 80 briquets. For a Weber kettle, I put about half a chimney of unlit coals in the grill and put about half a chimney of fully lit coals on top to get to 225°F. To get to 325°F, 3/4 to a full chimney should do it, though it all depends on the air temp, humidity, brand of charcoal, and other variables. You must do dry runs to calibrate your grill.
There is something else cool about the chimney. You can cook on it! It makes a better wok fire than anything in your kitchen. Just sit your wok on top and stir fry away. It gets incredibly hot. Or you can put a grate on it and cook thin foods right on top of the chimney, a technique I call the Afterburner Method. Use a chimney. Get repeatable heat every time and save your eyebrows.
Equally appealing is a chimney’s ability to help break our addiction to oil! Reduce air pollution! Or just get your charcoal started faster, cheaper, and without that petrochemical smell. Click here to read why we think this is the best way to start a charcoal fire hands down, and see other methods you might consider (but reject).
It is galvanized and that scares some people since galvaized steel contains zinc. According to Prof. Blonder, “zinc is both an essential mineral (this means your body needs it) but, at high doses, a neurotoxin. The US recommended daily allowance is around 10 mg/day. People ingest 100 mg a day as a supplement without apparent damage. The vapor pressure of zinc rises almost exponentially with temperature, but at 450°F it is pretty low and you are unlikely to inhale or consume enough zinc-laden smoke or food to exceed the 100 mg level.”
Product Information:
- Model:Weber Stephen Company 7429 Rapid Fire Chimney Starter
- Item Price:$ 0.00
*Price Subject To Change - Where to buy (buying from this supplier supports this website):
- Made in USA:yes
Published On: 5/19/2018 Last Modified: 4/25/2021
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
Moderators