Cooking With Cedar Aboard Your Boat

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



Planked grilled fish or simply cooking on a wooden plank is a great experience; if you love the taste and smell of smoke-cured meats, this way is for you.  This technique is great as it affords you real smoke for flavor. This is especially good if you are grilling mahi fillets, my favorite.  As a matter of fact, legend has it that this method to cooking on a grill came about as a result of griling fish fillets by chef experimentation.  But I speculate you could cook anything this way.  I prefer to call this way to cook planked grilled fish fillets.  Salmon and Mahi roasted on cedar are my favorites.  You can get the recipes for each of the fish fillets at our recipe page at Award Winning Boat Recipes.



So how do you do this?  To start you will need to find some clean cedar wood boards, Lowes and Home Depot have it in their lumber sections.  And then you will have to cut it with a saw into the right sizes to use.  But you can also buy it ready to use at most national grocery chains or you can order online.



Usually I use cedar, but many other woods like alder and cherry are available.  Using a smooth, raw section of wood about 1/2 inch thick and long and wide enough to support the fish sections pre-soak the lumber in freah water for several hours before use.  I use a piece about 6 x 6 for the 2 of us.  While most any hardwood can be used, make sure no chemicals have been on the lumber.



When prepared, get the grill going, gas preferably.  I like a Magma Catalina model gas grill on my vessel so I'll describe that process. To keep your fish from sticking to the lumber, coat the lumber with olive oil. You do no flipping when plank fish cooking.  The fish will be slowly cooked from the bottom up.  Flavor the fish fillets as you like, again check out my recipe page.



As you know wood burns.  We are now going to position the plank with the fish fillets on the lower grill surface and set the control to high.  If you see that the plank has caught fire while you are cooking, not to worry, it's the way we want the plank with fish to cook.  Spray it down with water to help extinguish the fire. But let it catch fire a little around the sides; the scorching of the blackened plank is what makes the smoke that flavors the fish.



I always appropriate about 50% more food planning time versus regular grilling when I am plank cooking.  During the grilling time you can baste the fish fillets with seasonings if desired.



Once the fish fillet is done I transfer the fish from the charred plank with a spatula or you can just slide the fish off onto a platter with a fork.  Turn off your grill and let the burned board sit until later to permit it to cool before disposal.



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



Enjoy.



Mike Dickens, the author, is a liveaboard boat owner and owner/Broker of Paradise Yachts in Florida USA.




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