Outdoor Gourmet Cherry Wood Planked Salmon with Asparagus

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We dined like royalty tonight. By this, I mean that I cooked up a meal of cherry wood planked salmon and grilled asparagus that anyone – be they royals or not – would have enjoyed! First, allow me to thank Katie Brandt at Outdoor Gourmet for the hard work she and her friends do to source the best organic and sustainably harvested wood grilling planks available. When I say these are top quality, I mean that make the planks you find in your local Wally World look like what they are… kindling.

Plank grilling has become our favorite way to enjoy fish, and these cherry wood planks impart a fantastic sweet smoke flavor that we love. It’s such a simple process, that I’m amazed that more folks don’t give it a try. You soak the planks for a couple hours (the longer the better), get them going on your grill, place your seasoned fish fillets on the plank, close the lid, and let nature take its course.

I place the planks in a glass baking dish, cover them with water, and set a couple of coffee mugs on top to weight them down. Two hours is about right for a good soak, but I actually left these over night as we did not get around to grilling last night. The planks soaked up about a quarter of the water or more and were fine.

I prepped the asparagus using the method Steve Raichlen suggestes in The Barbecue! Bible - which is to use tooth picks or wooden skewers to create little rafts that won’t fall through your grill grates.

I used the thinner variety of asparagus and was sure to snap them off between my fingers to dispense with the tougher ‘ends’ you dont’ always get rid of when using a knife. Then it was raft building time! Hey – just like camp!

After seasoning the salmon fillets and setting them in the fridge along with the oiled and seasoned asparagus rafts, I got the soaked planks going on the grill. You can see from the photo above that it does not take a long time for the heat of the grill to start working on them.

When the planks were nice and hot, I put the salmon fillets down and set the asparagus rafts on the top swing away rack. After putting the lid down, you can literally county a minute or less before the smoke starts to puff out of the grill vents. This is where the flavor happens!

It’s a good idea to have a bottle handy to douse any flare ups you get from the planks. Let’s be clear, I used the water bottle on the left. No beer was harmed in the production of this meal!

In fact, I sat back and enjoyed that Shiner Bock along with a couple of its friends and enjoyed the view from our back porch (above). All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening.

For more reading on Plank Grilling, check out what Larry Gaian has going on over at the BBQ Grail!