With summer basically here, you have no excuse to not be outside every moment possible, cooking every damn dinner you can on your grill. Think about it: a cold beer in your hand, some solid tunes playing on your favorite radio app, and the radiant heat of your grill warming you from belly to bowl cut. (If you have a bowl cut, we stronger recommend a new hairdo for summer — and forever — but that is neither here nor there. Back to grilling.)
One thing we like to do when we fire up the grill (especially if we happen to be using a gas grill) is to add a little extra flavor by using a wood plank. By cooking food on a wood plank, not only are you going to fill the air with the wonderful smell of charred wood, but you’ll be imparting subtle wood notes to whatever you are cooking.
One of our favorite meats to cook on a wood plank is fish. To highlight just how well a plank of wood works in grilling, we reached out to Wildwood Grilling to see what they were doing with their product. A great example of how fish and wood planks interact on a grill, they said, is with a herbed filet of salmon. While we use a cedar plank for this recipe, Wildwood Grilling has multiple types of wood planks for use in grilling, as well as smoking chips and wood wraps. The latter we had not seen before but it looks like a great way to imbue flavor and deliver a fun presentation.
You can check out their entire line here
Cedar Planked Salmon with Herbs and Lemon Recipe
(Serves 4)
Ingredients:
- 1 cedar grilling plank (make sure to get a large one that will fit a full fillet of salmon)
- 1.5 lbs salmon
- 2 tbsp Italian parsley, fresh and chopped
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 tbsp chives, fresh and chopped
- 1 lemon, sliced
- Salt and pepper (coarse)
Method:
- Soak the cedar plank in hot water for at least 15 minutes.
- Preheat oven or grill to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Season salmon with salt, pepper and add herbs and lemon slices.
- Add plank to grill or oven and close lid.
- Cook for 15-20 minutes or until desired doneness.
- When done, remove from grill or oven and serve immediately with lemon.
Finished with your salmon? Why not make this beet poke salad from award-winning chef José Andrés as a side dish to really impress the people you are cooking for?
