Cooking meals on board a vessel is a pleasure, and can make for some fond memories. Cooking on board does not need to be canned tuna and finger foods. Let me show you how to fix a gourmet seafood meal that will impress your guests aboard your boat. Planked grilled fish fillets aboard the trawler, the Patricia Ann; it is the talk of the town these days.
Planked grilled fish or simply cooking on a wooden board is a great experience; if you like the taste and smell of smoke-cured meats, this method is for you. This method is great as it gives you real smoke for flavor. This is particularly good if you are cooking salmon fillets, my favorite. So the story goes, legend has it that this method to grilling was discovered as a result of cooking chef fish grilling experimentation. But I speculate you could cook almost anything this way. I prefer to call this method planked grilled fish fillets. Salmon and Mahi cooked on cedar are my favorites. You can get the recipes for each of the fish at our recipe page at Award Winning Boat Recipes.
So how do you go about it? To start you will need to locate some clean cedar wood boards, Lowes and Home Depot have it in their building materials sections. But you’ll have to cut it into the correct sizes to use. Or you can also get it ready to use at most large grocery stores or you can order online.
Usually I use cedar, but many other woods like, oak, cherry are also available. Using a clean, untreated section of wood about one half inch thick and long and wide enough to hold the fish pieces pre-soak the lumber in freah water for several hours prior to use. I use a piece about 6 x 6 for the 2 of us. Although any lumber can be used, just make sure that there are no chemicals on the wood.
When ready, get the grill going, gas preferably. I like a Magma Catalina model gas grill on my boat so I’ll describe that process. To keep your fish fillets from sticking to the board, spray the plank with olive oil. You’ll do no flipping or turning when plank fish fillets cooking. The fish fillets will be slowly cooked from the bottom up. Flavor the fish as you like, there are some good recipes on the web page.
As you know wood burns. We are going to place the wood plank with the fish on the lower grill surface and set the controls to high. If the board catches fire while you are cooking, it's ok, that is the way we want it to cook. Give it a squirt with water to help put out the fire. Go ahead and let it catch fire a little around the sides; the burning of the blackened plank is what produces the smoke that flavors the fish.
I always appropriate about fifty percent more food preparation time as opposed to normal grilling when I am cooking on a plank. During the cooking time you can baste the fish with seasonings if desired.
Once the fish fillet is done I remove the fish from the seared plank with a spatula or you can just glide the fish off onto a plate with a fork. Be sure to turn off the grill and let the burned board sit until later to allow it to cool prior to disposal.
Plank grilling is truly is a fantastic way to cook fish fillets. The smoking adds to the flavours and smells of any recipe so feel free to try other ideas.
Enjoy.
Mike Dickens, the author, is a liveaboard boat owner and owner/Broker of Paradise Yachts in Florida USA.
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