You dont need any of that. Just make a mound of lump in your komodo, place 3-4 cotton balls soaked with alcohol and the stuff is ready in 5 min. But do what you want bro, just relaying some infos. for slow smoking at like 225-250F you want the charcoal to burn slow from top down. so in essence you dont want to chimney all of your coals, you want just a few to catch fire to provide just enough heat. For grilling I agree, but not for smoking in a komodo. Once you miss that 225-250F window and go above, youre fucked. those grills are insulated with no way to temp control down other than shutting off air flow completely and burping the grill for a hour to get temp to come down. and at that point, the grill might be fully out by then, so then you have to relight it. I made that mistake only once my first year. I vowed to never repeat it. This is why I say its cruicial to start low and work your way up. what I do is light it, leave baffles wide open until I reach about 200F, then shut it down to lowest setting and usually it hits 230F in a few more min.
