That sounds good, except the part about cedar. Does it taste like it smells?
LPT: buy cheap cedar boards at Home Depot instead and cut them into smaller pieces. The cost savings is very significant.
How sure are you those boards have not been treated with chemicals to prevent rot?
Came here to say the same thing! There’s used to be a really nice cooking show on the CBC out of Vangcouver called the Urban Peasant. One of the episode was about cedar-planked salmon.
He bought a 6in x 6ft plank of cedar at a local lumber supply store and sawed it with a hand saw and used it on the show - to illustrate your point.
As far as the smell: your whole house/apartment will smell of fragrant cedar. Very homey.
Yes, this is a big cost savings and also, you can cut them to the fit the sink you plan to soak them in.
Cedar is naturally insect resistant so unlikely to have been treated with chemicals, but still, pay attention to make sure nothing odd has been spilled on your cedar plank.
Especially don’t spill your drink!
Buy untreated.
What else is good on a ceder plank? My husband doesn’t care for salmon.
Well, obviously, if you can. I bought a load of untreated mahogany a few years back but the ends had been treated with a copper compound, that was why I suggested caution.
[edit - the point is that the wood at Home Depot hasn’t been clesred for food use. AFAIK when you buy untreated timber you are not guaranteed that it has not been treated with some insecticide or fungicide, just that it is not guaranteed to be rot proof. The absence of proof is not proof of absence.]
You can make pencils out of them:
Yeah it tastes a bit like it smells. But not as strong. Results with planking aren’t as strong or as distinctive as smoking. Cedar does go pretty well with oily fish and fatty, mild meats. Chicken thigh and pork belly turned out well when I tried it. But there’s nothing stopping you from using other woods. You can buy appropriate boards and cut them down yourself, but plenty of companies now sell a variety of pre cut food safe planks. And they can be had a lot cheaper than they used to be. I had good results with maple.
I had occasion to be involved in an event at the Yurok Tribe headquarters (the mouth of the Klamath River) and for lunch, the tribe cooked us salmon like this – cedar planks, salmon that had been swimming as late a 9 a.m., nothing but salt and pepper – my god, it was probably the best fish I’d ever had and easily ranks up in the top 5 meals of my life (two of the other five were at French Laundry) – just cafeteria trays of salmon filets and maybe a little bit of rice – I must have eat more than a pound of the stuff. It was heaven.
Those are 5 1/2 inches by 11 inches by 1/3 inch thick - so basically you’d have to buy a 12 foot 1x6, or two six-footers, to get the same surface area, and be buying a lot of board thickness you don’t need.
How much does cedar 1x6 @ 12’ go for?
To salmon on cedar,
Or not to salmon on cedar,
That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler to use some other local fish or salmon
or tilapia?
Go with cedar shingles.
What would go well on MDF?
Spam, maybe?
I don’t have any Spam in the house. How would possum work?
