Salmon on Cedar

I have been wanting to try grilling salmon on a cedar plank, and today was the day.


For starters, I could not find a cedar plank at the store. It is important to use untreated wood for anything to do with food. I was able to find cedar wood sheets. I assume these work the exact same, only these are not reusable. I soaked the sheets in a 5:1 water to apple juice mixture with a pinch of salt. Total soaking time was about one hour. I used the first thing I could find to hold the sheet underwater, it happened to be a wine glass, pretty classy. I timed all of my cooking based on this one hour soak. Personally, I could not taste any apple flavor in the food so next time I think I will either leave it out or halve the ratio of water to apple juice.



I got the salmon at the store. Per the fishmonger, my choice was between steelhead and Norwegian salmon (both farm raised.) I chose the Norwegian for no particular reason.

For seasoning, I chose as simple as possible, sea salt and and cracked pepper. Both of these are from Penzey's Spices. I liberally applied four peppercorn blend for the pepper and just a pinch of the salt. There were plenty of different suggestions online for rubs, but in-general, I find that simpler is better. This is especially true when trying something new for the first time. I did take some of the suggestions on the web and put some sliced onion and lemon on the top. I used lemon that we got from the farmer's market in the Soulard (2 for $.50) and onion from our little
failure of a garden. I started the seasoning part about half way through the soaking process. This let the fish come up to temperature a bit before going on the grill. I let everything sit while I prepared our side dish, grilled asparagus. Pretty simple preparation on this one: sea salt and lemon pepper (again from Penzey's.)
By the end of the hour of soaking, everything was ready and the grill was hot and ready. I took the cedar sheet out of the water and put it on the grill. The sheet was left on the grill for five minutes, then flipped to the other side. At this point, I put the salmon on the plank and closed the lid. The grill temperature was at about 325 to 350 degrees with the coals all the way to one side. The salmon was just barely over the coals. I left the lid closed and did not open it until the 15 minute mark. At this point, the asparagus was put on, right above the coals for a quick sear. After the asparagus was done, everything was take off the grill, roughly 30 minutes total grill time. I brought the salmon back inside for a five minute rest before cutting and plating.



Here is a close up of the finished product. You can see some of the fat has bubbled up to fill the middle crevice. You can tell that the fish is done when you can flake off pieces easily with a fork. I went for a split down the middle to give Audra and I a nice healthy piece. For plating, I surrounded the fish with the asparagus on three sides. The lemon was absolutely delicious on the asparagus and the fish, giving both a nice, light citrus taste. The salmon flaked apart nicely in perfect, fork sized portions. The asparagus was very flavorful, but could have used a bit more pepper and more of the bottom trimmed to keep it soft and easy to eat.
Overall, salmon on a cedar sheet with grilled asparagus was one of the tastiest and easiest thing I have grilled in a while.