Our Weber lighter cubes review as an alternative to using lighter fluid to light your charcoal. Readily available most places charcoal is sold. Cost is $4 for a box of 24 cubes. Lighter cubes can be used to start just about any outdoor fire. Weber recommends using 2 cubes at a time. That will cost you .32 cents a fire.
One of the big questions about the Weber lighter cubes. What are they made of? With the amount of warnings on the package you would think these things are radioactive. The answer is simply paraffin wax. Everything you need to know about them is on the MSDS sheets found here.
Inside the box is a foil covered plastic tray with individual pockets for each cube. Not only does this keep them fresh but it is also waterproof. This is needed because the product may dry out over time. It is best to keep them sealed in the pouch as long as possible. The box has a date on the top, it is unclear if this is the date of manufacture or an expiration date of some kind.
Weber 7417 lighter cubes put to the test:
Lighter cube in high winds.
We pop an individual Weber 7417 lighter cube from it’s plastic tray. Place it directly onto our grill grate. This is to test the burn time. Because there is a good breeze today, it will also be a good test to see if it blows out. So I hit the corner of the cube with a lighter. It takes a second or two to light. The cube catches fire rapidly with a nice high flame. Strong gusts of wind stoked the flame not burning it out. Burn time was 9 minutes. It would have burned a little longer because of the wind.
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An important to note is that these lighter cubes do give off a chemical burn smell accompanied by thick black smoke. This does not transfer to your food. Because the cube should fully burn out before cooking on it.
Taking the recommended 2 lighter cubes and place them into our bed of charcoal. It takes a second for them to catch fire. Once they get going they burn straight through. Burn time in the charcoal bed seemed a bit shorter. So in the end they did exactly what they were designed to do and very well. We were grilling in 30 minutes.
The final test in our Weber lighter cubes review.
Lighting a charcoal chimney full of coals. Simply placing our chimney down onto 2 lit cubes was very effective. Because they have a nice tall flame it really helps to light a chimney starter. Hot coals were ready to be poured in 20 minutes.
The conclusion of our lighter cube review:
Weber lighter cubes are a great alternative to using lighter fluid to start your coals. The wind and water resistance alone makes you want to have some handy if only for bad weather grilling. The burn smell and black smoke are the big down side to them.
Mike
aka Sultan of Sizzle
I have been blogging about and selling grilling tool for over 12 years. A Certified Food Safety Professional, KCBS member, award winning writer and have over 10 years experience in the food service industry.
“I have experienced some of the best food this country has to offer and nothing is better than the food that comes off my own grill!”
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