Jamie Purviance, author and grillmaster, dispels a common grilling myth: You don't choose how much charcoal to use based on how much food you're cooking. Instead, you should fill your grill two-thirds of the way with briquettes, regardless of the grill's size.
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TRANSCRIPT People think the amount of charcoal that they need depends upon how much food they're cooking or how many people they're serving and actually it depends much more on the size of the grill that you've got. You just want to get two thirds of the charcoal grate covered with briquettes. For your average size grill you're going to need somewhere between ninety and a hundred briquettes or one of these chimney starters filled up to the top and that's going to get the temperature up, initially, to about 500 degrees and then you can just let the temperature drop to whatever you want for ideal grilling.
