Memorial Day kicks off months of sunshine and backyard gatherings with a long weekend commemorating America’s fallen soldiers. It’s the first show of summer for red white and blue, when Americans take a day off work and make mountains of flame seared hotdogs and hamburgers in the backyard. Memorial Day Weekend is the unofficial start of the season marked by parades, poppies, and grilling.
Everyone expects to spend a little bit of money over the weekend, maybe to ring in the summer with an upgraded cooler or new lawn furniture. You’ll probably buy beer and ice, meats and veggies for grilling, hamburger buns, and ice cream. And while you might want to go all-out on the food, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on the grill itself.
You can make your own grill for under $10, and there are multiple ways to do it. From flower pots to plain ‘ole aluminum pans from the dollar store, you might not even have to leave the house to build yourself a working grill — it’s possible that you could make a grill from items that you already have lying around.
You need something to hold hot coals and a cooking surface for a DIY grill
A square or rectangular cooling rack over a dollar store aluminum baking pan is one of the cheapest and simplest ways to make a grill. The baking pan holds coals while you light them and as you grill your meal on the cooling rack placed on top. If you know what you’re doing, you’ll still be able to grill like a master on this basic-looking grilling setup.
A ceramic flower pot is another popular fireproof base for a DIY grill. Fill the bottom of the pot with sand and keep it on its saucer so the sand doesn’t fall out. Hot charcoal goes on top of the sand. Cook your food on a cooling rack on top of the flower pot over the hot coals. If you have a little more time and the space, you can build a grill in an hour or two with bricks and some metal mesh or racks. Or, take it a step further and dig yourself a barbecue pit rimmed with bricks with metal racks over a large hole.
Whether you’re waiting for your commercial grill to arrive (here are our favorite grills on the market) or want to skip the investment of a new grill this year, There’s a DIY grill option for everyone. You can make them with anything from basic aluminum baking pans to oil drum barbecue smokers and large cinder block grills.
