Dina Guillen - Plank grilling : 75 recipes for infusing food with flavor using wood planks

Copyright 2014 by Dina Guillen
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Sasquatch Books

Trade paperback editor: Gary Luke
Trade paperback project editor: Michelle Hope Anderson
Design: Anna Goldstein
Photographs: Rina Jordan
Food styling: Nathan Carrabba
Wood Texture: Alexander Bark / Shutterstock.com
Copy editor: Erin Riggio

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-57061-901-4
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57061-900-7

Sasquatch Books
1904 Third Avenue, Suite 710
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 467-4300
www.sasquatchbooks.com

v3.1

To Roland and Andrew, for all the
love, support, and encouragement
I could ever dream of

One of my culinary icons, Chef Michel Richard, wrote, In cooking, as in love, you have to try new things to keep it interesting. We all have our standbys, the same recipes we go to over and over again when we prepare grilled chicken, pork, salmon, beef, and vegetables. But to keep things interesting, we are always looking for new ways to prepare them.

This book will help you make things interesting. Yes, theres the chance your wood plank will catch on fire. But isnt that the epitome of interesting? I admit, the risk that my cedar-planked salmon might catch on fire is the reason I was highly hesitant, even intimidated, to begin plank grilling. But the opportunity to keep things interesting is always appealing to me, especially when it comes to food. Of course, once I realized that a simple spray bottle sitting next to my cooking area could extinguish flare-ups quickly, it was all anyone could do to keep me away from the grill.

This book is also designed to give you the tools to plank-grill confidently. I had the advantage of my brothers guidance during my introduction to plank grilling. He owned a company that manufactured grilling planks, and he passed along some helpful tips to get me started. Those tips and many more have made it into this book. I am not a chef, nor some master griller. Im a professional writer with a passion for cooking, entertaining, and passing on recipes that you will hopefully crave long after you have prepared them.

. Theyll both convert you into a meat loaf fan if you werent one before.

In fact, plank grilling elevates most meat dishes with the infusion of wood and smoke flavors, like . The only meat I dont prefer plank-grilled is a steak, so you wont find any rib-eye or porterhouse recipes in this book. I like my steaks cooked rare on the inside and crispy and crusty on the outside, and since food requires at least ten minutes on the plank to be infused with the smoke and wood flavors, it is difficult to get that unique plank-grilled flavor and still achieve the texture I love in a steak. But because taste is so subjective, definitely feel free to throw a steak on the plank if you want to give it a try.

Heres a tip: If youre trying to get a loved one to eat their vegetables, try plank-grilling them (the vegetables, I mean, not your loved ones). are three of my favorites.

And finally, Ive dedicated a whole chapter to pizzas, because when someone asks me what my favorite thing to grill on a plank is, my answer is always pizza. Plank-grilled pizzas taste like pizzas from a wood-burning oven, but instead of spending a thousand dollars to install one in your backyard, you spend approximately four dollars for a wood plank. is particularly suited to plank grilling; the smoky flavor it absorbs from the plank makes me feel like Im on a camping trip as I wipe the gooey chocolate and marshmallows from my cheeks.

I hope you love grilling from this book as much as I loved working on it. My wish is that these recipes will help you to create long, leisurely meals shared with family, friends, and loved ones, lingering over the table long into the night as youre reveling about how wonderful life is when it gets interesting. Enjoy!

Although a relatively new trend in restaurants, plank grilling has actually been around for hundreds of years. This cooking method was pioneered by Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest where every summer, they held ritual ceremonies giving thanks for the annual migration of wild salmon. Native Americans believed that the salmon was a gift from the rivers and ocean, and they held huge feasts celebrating the arrival of this sacred food.

Tribes from the Pacific Northwest typically used spices only sparingly with their fresh food. Cedar wood was used for its seasoning ability to flavor food with its natural oils and smoke. Additionally, Native Americans believed in the medicinal healing powers of cedar wood and held it in very high esteem.

Traditionally, salmon fillets were tied to wood planks with sticks and vines, and leaned vertically toward a large open fire pit. The salmon roasted slowly, basted by its own juices and flavored with the licks of flames, wafts of smoke, and infusion of spicy wood. The wood worked double duty, keeping the food clean during the cooking process and eliminating the need to flick grains of sand off of the fish in addition to flavoring it.

According to plank manufacturer Great Lakes Grilling, the earliest plank-grilling recipe ever documented was written by the brilliant Fannie Farmer, and it featured plank chicken and duchess potatoes. This recipe appeared in the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book published in 1911 (this popular cookbook was reprinted as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, which continues to be in print today).

With the invention of consumer grills in the 1950s, plank grilling became much more popular, especially with chefs around the country. Restaurants really deserve the credit for pioneering the way for home cooks, offering cedar-planked salmon on their menus year-round; many restaurants also try out new ways to use grilling planks to season other meats, fruits, cheeses, and vegetables.

The most authentically prepared cedar-planked meal you will find in a restaurant has to be at the Mitsitam Native Foods Caf found inside the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. The caf has salmon shipped from the Quinault Indian Nation and grills it in the native fashion, tied to cedar planks and cooked over an open fire. Restaurants with multiple locations nationwide where you can find delicious cedar-planked salmon on the menu include Gordon Biersch, Seasons 52, Sullivans Steakhouse, Sharis Restaurants, and celebrity chef Guy Fieris Johnny Garlic.