How not to light a grill.

There is more than one way to light a grill in preparation for cooking. There is a Right Way, a Wrong Way and a Really Wrong Way.

I was getting ready to do some cooking on my grill recently when I thought it might be fun to leave the gas on before lighting it so I get a dramatic flourish of flame when starting the grill. I’ve done it before many times and always got a kick out of watching the gas ignite with a small fireball. Not a real big explosion but without question the Wrong Way to light the grill.

This time though, I was to get a lesson on the Really Wrong Way to prepare my grill for cooking. Again I left the gas on in preparation for the precooking pyrotechnics but I decided to set up my camera to record everything. So I surveyed my patio for a place to put the camera and then worked on aiming it towards the grill and getting it set up for recording.

All while leaving the gas on.

With the camera now set up and recording, I walked to the grill with candle lighter in hand and proceeded to light the grill. The gas ignited with such a loud bang that it rattled my sliding glass doors and left me shaken but unhurt. In other words, I had just witnessed an…