Oregon · Main
Cedar-Planked Chinook Salmon
- Intermediate
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, a sweet edge rounding the corners, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 1 side of Chinook salmon, about 1kg, skin on
- An untreated cedar plank, soaked 2 hours
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 lemon, sliced
- Dill and thyme sprigs
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the cedar plank thoroughly so it smolders rather than catches.
- Rub the salmon with the brown sugar, salt, and pepper and rest 20 min. 20 min
- Set the salmon skin-side down on the plank, brush with oil, and lay lemon slices and herbs over.
- Cook on a covered grill over medium heat, or at 200C in the oven, 20-30 min until the flesh flakes at the thickest point and reads 52C for medium. 30 min
- Serve straight from the plank.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir (Willamette or Burgundy)
- Also Right
- Chilled Gamay (cru Beaujolais)
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Hibiscus iced tea
The fatty fish that cross the red line: silk-textured, low-tannin reds meet their oils without a metallic clash.
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