Originally Posted by bdjohns1
Don't ever, ever, ever use lighter fluid. Best way to start charcoal is using a chimney starter (available for ~$15 at Home Depot), next best would probably be one of those electric starters.
This was the best thing we did. I had a cheapo gas grill that was rusting out anyway, so I ditched that and got a charcoal grill. The chimney starter makes it very easy to not use lighter fluid. (I remember always using tons of lighter fluid growing up.) Pour some briquettes in there, stick a wadded up piece of newspaper in the bottom, and light the paper. Give it a while and you have perfect coals. The only tricky part is pouring them out. The chimney gadget gets plenty hot. I have two silicone oven mitts that I use for this purpose.
Speaking of charcoal, magiciansampras noted that you don't need to overload your grill with charcoal, and that's right - I've got a weber cookbook which recommends 50 briquettes for their 22.5" grills.
Yeah, I just use enough to make a single layer, and actually usually only for half the grill, because when it's just the two of us I'm not cooking that much.
Dip a folded paper towel in some kind of oil (vegetable, olive, etc) and use your tongs to oil the grill grate - food won't stick quite so much.
Do you actually manage to do this just after you pour the coals and put the grate down (so you don't have to try to hold up the grate and oil it somehow) or is that just not possible? If so it's definitely the trick I've been looking for.
One of these days I'm going to try the cedar plank salmon. I have some cedar planks bought for that purpose, but we're kind of afraid to ruin good fish. Some of our fish grilling tries (they were on the old cheapo gas grill, though) came out so-so, and some not so great.
Also want to try wood chips again. I tried a smoker box a couple times on the gas grill, but I wasn't too impressed with that. Might try the real lump charcoal one day.