How to light a charcoal grill

On Memorial Day 2017 with everyone cooking out and having fun, don’t look silly and make sure you know how to light a charcoal grill to cook the food.

There are many things closely associated with Memorial Day and the holiday. You think of summer activities such as baseball or fun out on the beach and lake. Perhaps more widespread, though, is that everyone loves to cookout and have fun with friends and family. You fire up the charcoal grill and get that good smokey flavor on burgers, steaks, hot dogs and so on.

But before you can do all of that, you need to have the right equipment ready to roll. More specifically, you don’t want to mess things up for your charcoal grill. Thus, you may be asking yourself how to light a charcoal grill. After all, you want to make sure the food is as good as it can possibly be.

With that in mind, we’ll give you a quick step-by-step tutorial on how to light your charcoal grill so your Memorial Day fun goes seamlessly and that everyone goes home happy.

Step 1 for lighting your charcoal grill comes with cleaning it up. Make sure that all of the ash is cleared before you get started. Next for Step 2, you need to remove the grate (if you haven’t already) and then arrange charcoal briquettes on the bottom — in a pyramid shape for best lighting results. Also be sure to open the vent on the bottom of the grill.

Then we move on to Step 3, which is carefully dousing the charcoal in lighter fluid. Obviously you need to be careful before Step 4, lighting the grill with a match or a long lighter. Be careful with this given the lighter fluid as the risk of being burned is obvious.

You’re not done just there, though. You’ll need to wait about 12-15 minutes for the briquettes to heat up to the desired temperature you need. Then comes Step 5, where you’ll want to spread out the charcoal on the floor of the grill evenly, making the bed slightly wider than the area that you’ll be grilling on for the best results.

Next: 30 best Disney movies of all time

After that, you’re good to go and you can put the grate back on and begin grilling. You may want to check out the best ways to cook whatever you’re grilling, but lighting your charcoal grill is the first and most important battle.