How to Build a Fire on the Big Green Egg, in Pictures

Make sure your grill is positioned in a safe spot, away from furniture, tree branches, or anything else that could potentially set fire. Open the dome of your grill and remove the stainless steel cooking grid.

Fill your grill with charcoal to the line inside (leaving a few inches from where the cooking grid will lay). I used Big Green Egg 100 Percent Organic Lump Charcoal, made entirely out of "carbonized wood." The benefits of using natural lump charcoal are countless. You won't need lighter fluid. You can use less charcoal. It quickly and easily lights up yet lasts longer. Most importantly, it doesn't impart any chemical flavors in the food.

**If you already have charcoal in your grill from a previous cookout, you can use it again. Just be sure to rake out any pieces of ash and clean out the ash door (located at the bottom of the grill). Double check the air holes in the firebox to ensure they aren't clogged with ash as it can limit air flow. Clean them out too. Then, fill the remaining grill with new charcoal.

To make fire, you need air! To circulate air, look toward the bottom of the grill and find the draft door. Slide it completely open.

Tuck a fire starer in the center of the charcoal and light it.

Once the fire is lit, replace the stainless steel cooking grid on top. If it's a little grimy from the last cookout, use a wire brush to scrape all the gunk away. Allow the charcoal to burn for about 7-10 minutes, or until several coals are burning.

At this point, you need air circulation yet you still need to heat up the grill. To do this, close the dome and fully open the dual-function metal top to let the air flow until the desired temperature is reached.

The beauty of the Big Green Egg is it's SO easy to control the temperature. Instead of a knob on your stove top, the metal top and the bottom draft door serve as such. Simply open and close them, allowing more or less air, to control the temperature, which can be easily read on the temperature gauge on the top of the dome. More open equals higher temperature. Less open equals lower temperature.

Once you've placed the food on the grill, be sure to close the dome. Otherwise you just end up drying out the food and wasting the heat you just worked so "hard" to build (it will radiate out of the grill).

Once you're done cooking, lift the dome an inch or two, then lower slightly, then lift slightly. This action is called "burping." Don't open the dome fully until you've done this action. You don't want a rush of oxygen into the flame, otherwise you may risk injury. You can quickly extinguish the fire by shutting the metal top and bottom sliding door completely closed. No air means no fire.