When you think about buying a new grill, you may start thinking about what type of grill fuel you want to use. The type of grilling fuel you use can impact the way your grilled meat tastes. In addition, the grill you buy can make a difference in the amount of heat you can access, the ease of grill ignition and what meats will work best upon it.

Common Kinds Of Grill Fuels To Choose From

Using Wood Chips To Grill: Most people choose wood chips as their grilling fuel when they want to get intense flavors from their fuel choice. You can find many different types of wood chip flavors, including tasty flavors like apple, cherry, guava, pecan, mesquite, maple, oak or kiawe. Wood chips are quite fast to burn, which is a great thing. They are also affordable, which is another draw.

Charcoal Briquettes As Grill Fuel: The most commonly used fuel for grilling is coal or charcoal briquettes. It’s most often chosen because it’s very affordable and found easily at almost any store. Of course, the disadvantages include the fact they are dangerous to use and health-threatening.

The carbon monoxide they give off through their burning is absorbed into the meat being cooked. The digestion of this can lead to respiratory and other health problems. In addition, charcoal doesn’t give a tasty flavor without sauce or barbecue sprays added to the mix.

Lump Charcoal: Lump charcoal is one of the better choices in grill fuel. Lump charcoal is basically wood (or larger wood chips, known as wood chunks) that have been transformed into coal. It hasn’t been processed however, so this material is still in raw form.

Lump charcoal would be the most ideal barbecue charcoal because it is inexpensive, provides no chemical effects and because of the variety of smoky flavors inherent in the wood. It can offer a tasty product through the simple process of cooking. The only drawback is that it is not likely to be easily accessible so your average store might not carry it regularly.

Along with choosing a grill fuel, you’ll want to choose a healthy fire starter as well. Three of the most common fire starters are:

Charcoal To Instantly Light

You can get charcoal to instantly light to help you start your grill. However, this type of charcoal includes a petroleum product that can give off potentially harmful fumes into your food. Of course, it can also add a bitter taste to the food. So, you may not want to choose this method of lighting.

Lighting Fluid

It’s easy to use charcoal lighting fluid to light your grill and it’s very affordable as well. But, you must soak the coals in the fluid for several moments before you try to light it. Also, let the fluid burn completely off of the coals before grilling. Keep in mind it may be against the law to use it in your area due to the pollutants it can put off.