Fire starters

The husband and I have been working on our fire building skills, and they aren't horrible. But we always have to hold our breath for a but to see if it will work this time or not.

I have read a bunch of camping hacks and Life Pro Tips and am excited to try homemade fire starters! Here is the process to make them:

Materials:

Paper condiment cups (my local fast food favorite has these out so we collected some last time we got dinner there)

Bacon grease

Cotton balls

They were super simple to make, put two cotton balls in each up, spoon warm bacon grease over them, use extra cotton balls to wipe all the grease out of the dish, and your set!

I put mine back in the fridge till I need them since it's been so hot here recently and I wanted the grease to stay more solid.

Now for the practical review:

The first time we tried them we actually forgot and used them after the fire was already built and they didn't seem to help to get it going. They ended up on top of the wood, which was definitely not ideal.

The second time we used them, we did a much better job getting a couple fire starters at the bottom of the wood pile. They lit really easily with our long neck lighter and we were able to move them around a bit with our grill tongs. That way we were able to get them under different logs to get the logs lit. The fire starters burned strong for about 10 minutes, creating a lot of good flames to light the logs.

I would definitely make these again, especially since I was able to make them with stuff I had around the house anyways. For my next batch I'm going to try candle wax instead of bacon grease. I'll let you know how those compare!