GRILL HACK: If You Run Out of Charcoal, You Can Fire Up Your Grill with Doritos!

It's grilling season and I just stumbled across a really fun hack that I fully intend to try at some point this summer. I was scrolling through Facebook a few days ago and found a post from my friend Mary Howell in my news feed. In that post, Mary said this:

Now, I'll be honest. I have never considered setting a bag of Doritos or Fritos on fire and cooking a steak or some hamburgers over them. In fact, I'm not even sure who came up with this idea. And, I kinda doubted that Mary's fun fact was "fact" at all.

So, I thought, "WWBFD?"  What would Bobby Flay do?"  I decided to do a little bit of internet surfing to see if there are people out there really using Doritos to fire up their grills.

As it turns out, there are!

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According to LifeHacker.com, "Doritos make an excellent fire starting material." Apparently, the combination of hydrocarbons and fat (both of which burn really really well) makes a bag of Doritos a big ol' Duraflame log.

And, get this! It's not just Doritos. Apparently, you could use these . . .

Or even these . . .

At some point this summer, I fully intend to try this. But I wanted to see this action. Luckily, I found YouTube content creator, Girl in the Woods!  She published a video about four years ago called "How to Cook a Steak over Flaming Doritos." This is the ultimate Redneck BBQ! Of course, note the obvious here. She doesn't actually burn the bag. She burns the contents of the bag.

As Girl in the Woods and Mary Howell say, "Turns out you don't need wood or charcoal to cook a steak to perfection. All you need is a bag of Doritos!"

Naturally, my morning show cohost and I had to try this, so we did. We borrowed a charcoal grill from a coworker, ran to Kroger to get some "Party Size" bags of chips (shout out to digital coupons), and gave it a try!  It worked- all too well.