Cedar Planked Fish Cooking

Cooking aboard a vessel is a delight, and can make for some fond memories.  Cooking meal on board does not need to be processed meals and finger foods.  Let me show you how to make a gourmet seafood meal that will impress your dinner guests on board your yacht.  Planked grilled fish fillets aboard the trawler, the Patricia Ann; it's all the rage on the docks these days.

Planked grilled fish or merely cooking on a wood board is a fantastic experience; if you love the flavor and smell of smoke-cured meats, this method is for you.  This technique is great as it affords you real smoke for flavor. This is particularly good if you are grilling redfish fillets, which are my favorite.  As a matter of fact, legend has it that this method to cooking on a grill was discovered as a result of cooking chef's trial and error.  But I speculate you could cook almost anything this way.  I prefer to call this way to cook planked grilled fish fillets.  Salmon and Mahi baked on cedar are my favorites.  You can get the recipes for each of the fish at our recipe page at our website.

So how do you go about it?  To start you will need to find some clean cedar wood boards, Lowes and Home Depot have it in their building materials departments.  But you’ll have to cut it into the right sizes to use.  But you can also buy it prepacked to use at most large grocery chains or you can order on the Internet.

Most often I use cedar, but many other woods like alder and maple are also available.  Using a smooth, untreated piece of wood about one half inch thick and big enough to hold the fish pieces soak the wood in water for several hours prior to use.  I like to use a section about 6 x 6 for the 2 of us.  Although any wood can be used, just make certain that there are no chemicals on the lumber.

When prepared, get your gas grill going.  I use a Magma Catalina model gas grill on my vessel so this article is written using that method. To prevent your fish fillets from sticking to the plank, coat the wood with olive oil. You do no flipping or turning when plank fish cooking.  The fish will be slowly cooked from the bottom up.  Feel free to season the fish fillets as you like, there are some good recipes on the web page.

We all know that wood burns.  We are now going to position the plank with the fish on the lower grill surface and set the control to high.  If you see that the plank has caught fire while you are cooking, it's ok, it’s the way we want the plank with fish to cook.  Give it a squirt with water to help put out the fire. But let it ignite a little around the sides; the smoldering of the scorched plank is what makes the smoke that flavors the fish.

I always allow about fifty percent more food preparation time versus regular grilling when I am plank cooking.  During the preparation time you can baste the fish with flavourings if desired.

Once the fish is done I transfer the fish fillets from the seared board with a spatula or you can just slide the fish fillets off onto a plate with a fork.  Be sure to turn off the grill and let the used board sit until later to permit it to cool before disposal.

Plank grilling is truly is a fantastic way to prepare fish fillets.  The smoking adds to the flavors and aromas of any recipe so feel free to try various ideas.

Enjoy.