FAQs

Probably far more than you would imagine. Here, in no particular order, is a list that is probably not exhaustive.

• Gelled alcohol starter.

• 90% or above isopropyl alcohol and a paper towel.

• Vegetable oil and newspaper.

• Newspaper.

• Auplex Electric Charcoal Starter.

• Parafin firestarter pouches.

• Looftlighter or paint stripper heat guns.

• MAP/Pro gas with a torch.

• Propane gas with a torch.

• Propane weed burner.

• Electric starter.

• Chimney starter.

• Fatwood, aka, lighter wood.

We will point out that fatwood/lighterwood and lighter fluid are not recommended by any manufacturer of ceramic grills since the resin from the fatwood and the fumes of the lighter fluid can permeate the ceramic and produce off-odors for a considerable time. The odors will fade with time, but you can speed up the process by doing a series of one-hour 500°F burns to eliminate the odor.

Well, you can but it is certainly not ideal nor recommended. We don't think anyone would seriously argue that the smell of lighter fluid is pleasant in a food context. The fluid will indeed permeate your ceramic somewhat and the smell will persist if you don't do anything about it. That said however, some folks think that somehow these chemicals "burn into the ceramic" and ruin your cooker for life. Another silly old wive's tale. While again, we wouldn't recommend using lighter fluid, you might find yourself in procession of a ceramic cooker that has had lighter fluid used in it. Maybe you bought it used. Or maybe your uncle Harold thought he was being helpful by adding a nice squirt of lighter fluid to your fire. All is not lost! You can burn the smell out by burning charcoal in your cooker at 500°F for an hour. You may have to repeat one or more times, but eventually, the smell will be gone and your cooker will be just like new.

But of course, you want to know if we have ever actually rid a ceramic cooker of lighter fluid to verify this claim that hot burns will get rid of the odor. OF COURSE WE DID! We took a nice big can of lighter fluid and sprayed the walls of one of our cookers, the firebox and the fire ring. We left the lid open for an hour or so to let some soak in and some evaporate. Then we lit the fluid to get rid of it before adding charcoal to do the high heat burns. Before the charcoal was lit, the fumes of lighter fluid were epic! We could smell them almost anywhere in our yard. But guess what. After two high heat burns the odor was almost completely gone! After a third high heat burn, the cooker was like new.

So to sum this up, it's best to avoid lighter fluid, but if you find yourself needing to cleanse a ceramic cooker, several high heat burns will do the trick!

Of course you can! Some folks think that because Auplex BBQ says in their FAQ's not to use lighter fluid, that this means don't use chemicals of any kind and that somehow these chemicals "burn into the ceramic". How silly. There are many lighter fluid on the market all contains chemicals yet no one objects to their use. No, gelled alcohol is just fine. Not to mention that Auplex BBQ recommends giving your cooker a good scrub with (wait for it) isopropyl alcohol or acetone when replacing the gasket. The chemical that Auplex BBQ recommends against is some bad lighter fluid . And even that is not a total disaster. Auplex BBQ provides instructions for getting rid of the smell of lighter fluid in their FAQ's.

You'll find some differences of opinion on this. At one end of the spectrum we have the dump it and forget it crowd. They dump the charcoal into the cooker straight out of the bag, just being careful not to dump the bottom of the bag (dust and chips) into the cooker. At the other end of the spectrum, you'll find those that completely remove all the old lump, clean out all the ash, and then build a whole new fire. And to do this, they will sort their lump charcoal, putting the biggest pieces on the bottom, fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle, and using smaller pieces as they build the pile of charcoal up.

We are sort of in the middle. Well, ok, we are sort of towards the sorting end of the spectrum. We empty all the old lump out. We put several big pieces in the bottom of the fire, and we then add more lump carefully, making sure to use only pieces that are big enough to leave lots of air spaces between pieces. We don't do the jigsaw puzzle thing, however.

Once you have determined which end of the spectrum you want to pursue, there is one other word of advice. Use plenty of charcoal. Don't be shy. You don't want to run out. We fill our cooker up about 1/2 way up the fire ring. It's better to have too much than to have your fire go out.

Assuming that you want some smoking chunks in your fire, we like to bury some chunks in the pile of charcoal near the top so they can start smoking later in the cook. We put a couple of fist-sized chunks on the top of the charcoal for the initial smoke. Other folks will mix in a good handful or two of chips throughout the charcoal so that they get a little smoke all the time during the cook.

Then to start this pile of charcoal, we have had really good results with using a chimney starter to get a roaring fire going in the starter, and then dumping this on top of the charcoal and smoking chunks. The temperature in the cooker will rise initially from all that fire, but by the time you add your ceramic barrier, drip pan and cold meat, you will find the temperature will easily drop below 200 degrees. Then you can start regulating your fire with the air vents as you allow the temperature to rise towards your target temperature.

In general, it is harder to cool the cooker than to heat the cooker, so you should strive not to get into a position where you do have to cool the cooker.

However, if you want to cool the cooker down, there are a few things you can try:

One is to close the vents and wait. Just be careful not to put your fire out. Check it every so often and give it some air if necessary.

You can open the cooker, remove the food, grids, etc. and shovel some or all of the charcoal into a metal bucket so as to reduce or remove the fire from the cooker.

Although this may seem counter intuitive, you can try dumping some fresh charcoal on top of your fire. This will reduce the amount of air getting to the top surface of the fire, and it will absorb some of the heat of the fire. Be sure that you have reduced the opening of your vents so as not to let all this new charcoal simply start burning and making the problem worse.

Whatever you do, don't douse the whole cooker with a flood of water. But generally speaking, closing the vents and waiting for the cooker to cool along with some fresh charcoal dumped on top is your best bet.

The easiest way to remove ash from your cooker is to use an ash tool to scrape out the ash into a metal Ash Shovel . Make sure you use a metal receptacle since you often can't be sure that there isn't a glowing ember in the ash. You can see a photo of the ash tool sold by Auplex BBQ to the right. 

This works well on the large and medium kamado. It can be a little tricky to maneuver through the smaller vent of the small kamado, but it can be done. One other thing to note is that if you have any burned charcoal in the cooker already, you might as well give it a stir with the ash tool to knock off any loose ash and small pieces of charcoal. Then scrape it all out through the bottom vent with the ash tool.

You may also wish to investigate the ash collector which make cleaning ash out of your cooker fairly easy.

You don't have to remove ash after every cook since you will be burning lump charcoal which produces minimal ash. In fact, it is probably better if you don't clean the ash out after every cook. Ash is very good at insulating and a small amount of ash sitting on the bottom of your cooker will help keep the temperature down beneath the cooker. You only need to clean ash from the cooker when it is blocking the airflow from the vent up through the fire. Very little ash accumulates around the outside of the fire box, so you also don't need to remove the fire box very often to clean out behind it. The most important thing to do before every cook is to make sure that the air holes in the fire box are not blocked and that the holes in your grate are also not blocked.