This is a good list for a person starting out. These items will make your grilling experience better.

You can get these items at Foster’s Grill Store or if you’re not from around Gloucester MA, these links on Amazon-

The main reason people that don’t cook with charcoal is because they think it’s too time consuming. It really isn’t when you use a chimney starter-

Weber Stephen Company 7429 Rapid Fire Chimney Starter, Silver



Lighter cubes are cheap and make it so you won’t have a bunch of spent newspaper flying around the bottom of your grill collecting grease and sticking to your food. They get your coals going inside the chimney starter in minutes, effortlessly.

Lighter Cubes- Weber 7417 Lighter Cubes

Weber 7417 Lighter Cubes by Weber Stephen Company

A Dual Probe Meat Thermometer-

There are fancier ones. I’ve tried them. This one just works. If you are BBQing, you need to know two things primarily. The ambient temperature at the grill grate level and the internal temperature of your meat. When you can confidently know these things, you can confidently BBQ. There are so many cuts of meat that if you use internal temp’s as a guideline you’re going to succeed, and if you’re off by ten degrees you can ruin an expensive piece of meat. it’s up to you, would you rather know you nailed it or would you rather gamble. As far as smoking meat, I generally smoke at grate temps between 225-275. when you have the remote wireless meat thermometer you can monitor those temps from the couch or the kitchen.

Tongs-

Cooking Tongs for Kitchen Grill BBQ –

My buddy Craig has these and while there are a ton of different kinds of tongs out there I like the little bit of silicon up on the handle, it gives just a little bit more grip when you’re manning the grill for extended periods of time. and the price is right.

Charcoal Baskets- Cheapies and Buy One set For The Rest Of Your Life-

Charcoal baskets serve several purposes. One they protect the bottom of your grill from crazing and porcelain pops. Two, they are an excellent way to control your charcoal placement for direct and indirect cooking.

The cheapies (which are perfectly fine and you’ll probably get at least 4 seasons of heavy cooking out of them)-

The heavy duty buy them once and have them for the rest of your life charcoal baskets. I have these and if you’re a serious charcoal griller, buy them they’re stainless and about three times thicker. I reviewed them here

Quality Grill Parts Heavy Duty Stainless Steel Charcoal Baskets for Weber Grills by Quality Grill Parts, LLC $29.99

On all the grill forums people rave about a product called the vortex. It creates a high heat situation which makes excellent chicken wings. I find that with two charcoal baskets pushed together you can get equally as good results.

Grill Brush- Do I need to do a lot of explaining here other than to say that this model has three sets of bristles to go up and down the grates and get in between the grooves.

Welder’s Gloves-

I’ve tried the silicon gloves and they get all sweaty nasty inside. These welder’s gloves are great and economical to lift your hot grates out when there’s hot coals underneath-

Charcoal Caddy-

Keeps the charcoal dry and easy to pour out of. I have a couple of these. One I keep charcoal in and another to keep bags of wood chips and lighter cubes and match sticks.

Galvanized ash can-

To dispose of spent ashes without worrying about lit coals igniting the woods around you or when you’re traveling and cooking out to properly dispose of spent ashes.

These are what I consider to be essentials. What would you add to the list as essentials?