Well guys the weather is starting to get a bit warmer outside and that means pretty soon you are going to be pulling the barbecues out of the side shed
So for this project I thought it might be fun to try a little charcoal igniting life hack to help you with your summer grilling.
now the only materials you are going to need for this simple life hack, is one of these paper egg cartons as well as some of these charcoal briquettes that you would normally use for barbequing anyway.
now if you've ever tried working with charcoal before, you are going to know that its really messy stuff and If you get this stuff on your hands it leaves marks everywhere. It's very dirty.
it also takes quite a bit of work to get it to ignite.
holding a simple barbeque flame against it will not light it off.
it takes a lot more than that.
so the purpose of today's experiment is to make a clean and tidy little charcoal starting bundle that will light off in an instant and get our charcoal glowing and make summertime barbecuing that much easier.
Alright so here's the basic idea:
We're going to start off with some of these paper egg cartons, they come in different sizes.
you can get a pack of six for a smaller barbeque bundle
or you can just go with the 12 pack for something a little more substantial.
now the idea here is almost as simple as taking your charcoal briquettes and setting them down in the slots designed for the eggs.
once all the slots are filled up, go ahead and fold over the lid and now its almost ready to ignite with the exception of one small modification.
when we go to light these things off we want them to catch fire and burn thoroughly. so we need a channel for the air to flow, because without the air, fire will not [ burn ]
if you look on this end of the box where it was chopped in half, you can see there are two are holes naturally formed. So we're gonna flip it around and replicate that same idea on the other end
so using a pair of scissors I just cut a small hole in the end here so now we've got a vent hole in both of the ends,
and I made a few slits along the top as well so we could peel that open and form a hole in the top as well.
we want the fire to be able to flow up and through the container and not get smushed and pushed
off to the side so there we go it almost seems too easy but just like that we
have a clean compact container it's very affordable and with a simple lick of a
BBQ igniter we can get our charcoal going now without paying at any further
attention all right it's time for the burn test so let's take this thing
outside light it up and see how it does all right guys I brought you outside so
we can put this thing to the actual test looking inside here you can see this is
charcoal straight out of the bag it has not been pre lit it hasn't been tampered
with in any way I just stuck it in this container we're going to light this off
so you can see how it actually performs so you can decide for yourself if it's
something you'd actually use so for demonstrational purposes I'm going to
use this little Weber grill we're going to set this thing right down on the
bottom light it off and watch it burn.
one side is lit
okay so lighting the top isn't going to work because all the heat is traveling
upward and it's not burning down so we're actually gonna have to light this
thing from the bottom so he can travel up to the cold let's just light it right
here in the middle and see how that goes
the thing I love about these egg cartons is there are natural air channels built in
to allow the air to flow and feed the flame so even when we turn it upside
down the flame will keep going and here you see why it's really important that
we have this little vent hole in the top to allow the air to flow and heat to build.
now we wait.
guys it's been 15 minutes since we first lit it off so let's go take a look
so the charcoal has started off you can see it's turning white there, turning into ashes
and that's exactly what we want you can see all the paper has burned
down to a white ash but every single one of these briquettes did start off
they're burning just the way that they should they're all grouped together and
I think at this point it should be safe to go ahead and throw on the grill and
cook up some hotdogs
alright so quick update guys our hotdogs have been sitting on the grill for a
little over half hour so let's go take our first peek and see how they're doing.
I think they're done, still nice and warm. Let's take a look here let's crack them open
looks like they're cooked all the way through, even a little juicy. yum.
perfect! six coal, six hot dogs. let's eat. grilling in May. [laughs]
now, if you want your BBQ starter to ignite even faster you can grab a small piece of printer paper and simply wrap
it around the box a thin sheet of printer paper like this will go up in
flames a lot faster than an egg carton and I like to wrap mine around the box
and tape it at the bottom just it looks a little bit nicer the paper just acts
as a tinder to make the cardboard go off a little bit faster but it also gives it
a little bit cleaner look as well and if you just want to have a little bit more
fun and take it to the next level you could use some string or some twine to
bundle it up into a package or in my case firework fuse
yay it works! that's actually really cool
so there you have it guys a quick and simple hack using some briquettes and
some egg cartons to make a really cool self-starting bundle of charcoal
hey thanks for joining me for this experiment I'll be looking for you the
next one talk to you then