So after making burgers on the grill almost every week for quite a while my roommate and I decided to try cedar plank salmon after I saw it while browsing some recipes online. The idea is the cedar will impart some smoky cedary flavor to the salmon while cooking. So I head out to Home Depot to pick up some cedar planks, originally searching the lumber section, and eyeing some power tools to cut up the wood. Realizing I could easily spend over $400 on wood and power tools I probably don’t need (but might someday), I sadly head over to the grilling section and find some pre-made cedar planks for grilling. At only $8 for 2 planks it was a close thing – had they been over $10 I might have opted for the 8ft planks of cedar and a sawzall. Anyway, after the trip to home depot I headed over to whole foods to get some salmon, where they were actually selling some on cedar planks. After picking up the salmon sans planks at whole foods, I soaked the home depot planks for a couple hours (along with some corn, which is beneath them)
So to prepare the salmon, I just salted and peppered each side (maybe a bit too much salt, they tasted like they came right from the ocean).
Up to the grill now. We had a bit of trouble at first with a grease fire (apparently no one really cleans community grills), but luckily there are 2 grills on my roof so we switched to the next one and after a thorough cleaning we got the salmon on the grill.
I’m not sure what was with my camera that day, but most of the pictures are either really washed out because of flash, or blurry because of no flash and a longer exposure time. But the salmon cooked nicely for about 15 mins or so, and with 2 flips it came out looking mighty tasty
Served with some rice and grilled corn on the cob
The salmon was fantastic, as was the corn. I kind of ignored the rice and it was pretty bland. The only problem with the salmon was a bit too much salt. Some mouthfuls were like taking a drink of the ocean and getting some fish with it, others were pleasantly smokey and cedary. Overall a great meal I will repeat many times.
Recipe:
-about 6oz salmon per serving
-salt and pepper to taste
-cedar planks
Soak cedar planks for at least 1hr before grilling. Preheat grill to high, and when it gets hot enough put the planks on and turn heat down to medium. After 5mins flip planks and place salmon on them, skin side down. Grill for 10-15mins, until flaky and not translucent.