Lighting a fire without firelighters

A fire needs three things in the right order: something that catches from a match, something that catches from that, and something that burns long enough to turn into coals. Every method below is the same idea with different materials. Get the order right and you do not need a chemical accelerant at all.

Never petrol, never thinners, never brake cleaner. Petrol vapour is heavier than air, pools in the braai and ignites as a ball rather than a flame. People lose eyebrows, eyelashes and occasionally a good deal more this way every summer. There is no version of being in a hurry that justifies it.

1. The paper chimney

The most reliable, and it needs newspaper and nothing else.

Take four or five sheets of newspaper. Roll each loosely into a tube about as thick as your wrist, then tie it in a loose knot. Loose matters — tight paper smoulders.
Stand the knots in the middle of the braai in a rough ring, leaving a gap in the centre.
Build charcoal or small wood around and over them like a tent, leaving the gap in the middle clear so air can rise through it.
Light the paper at two or three points around the bottom.

The gap is the whole trick: it makes a chimney, hot air rises through the fuel and pulls fresh air in underneath. Leave it alone for ten minutes. Poking it collapses the chimney and you start again.

2. Top-down

Counter-intuitive and excellent for wood, because it burns down into a bed of coals rather than needing to be rebuilt.

Biggest logs on the bottom, in a single layer.
Medium pieces across them, at right angles.
Kindling across that.
Two paper knots on the very top, and light those.

It burns downward. Each layer is dried and pre-heated by the one above before it catches, so you get very little smoke and a fire that needs no attention for half an hour. It is slower to look impressive and faster to be ready.

3. A cardboard roll and a cooking oil

An empty toilet roll or a strip of corrugated cardboard, stuffed with crumpled paper and rubbed with a spoon of sunflower or olive oil, burns for several minutes with a steady flame — longer than paper alone. Cardboard egg boxes work the same way. Put one or two in the middle and build over them as in the chimney method.

Cooking oil is safe here because it is not volatile: it does not give off an explosive vapour at room temperature the way petrol does. It burns off completely long before anything goes on the grid.

4. Braai salt and paper, or a handful of charcoal dust

The dust and small fragments at the bottom of a bag of charcoal catch far more readily than lumps. Tip a couple of handfuls into the centre, soak a sheet of paper in a little cooking oil, bury it in the dust, and light it. The dust catches, and the lumps you pile on top catch from the dust.

Kindling, if you have no paper either

Dry grass and fine twigs — gathered thinner than a match, a good double handful.
Pine cones — resinous and they catch instantly. Fine as kindling; do not cook over pine, but at this stage it is burning out, not flavouring anything.
Bark — the loose, papery outer bark off gum or wattle.
Fat wood — the resin-soaked heart of an old pine stump. Shave slivers off it. It will light wet.

When it will not catch

Nine times in ten it is one of three things.

No air underneath. Ash from last time blocks the vents. Clear the bottom out before you build.
Packed too tight. Fire climbs through gaps. If it looks neat, it is too neat.
Damp fuel. Charcoal that has sat in a shed through a wet winter has absorbed moisture and will fight you. Dry it in the sun for an hour, or use more kindling than feels sensible.

And then wait

Whichever way you light it, the fire is not the point — the coals are. Charcoal wants twenty to thirty minutes from lighting to an even grey coat. Wood wants forty-five to sixty. Use the hand test in how to read your coals rather than the clock, and start the fire earlier than you think you need to.