Dave's Fiction Warehouse

In which I bloviate about books, TV, movies, politics and other stuff.

Connect

I’ll have the planks, thanks

by

weber gas grill plank cooking

The bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

When I’m not blogging, which is most of the time, I am cooking things on the grill. I do it so much that recently I bought this expensive Weber to replace the cheap piece of crap I got a couple of years ago. Two or three seasons and it was falling apart. Yes, the barbecue season in Florida lasts roughly 12 months a year, but still.

Anyway, this Weber is the Cadillac of grills. It turns out that being able to regulate the heat is a real plus. With previous grills, I had essentially two choices: ambient outside temperature and about 700 degrees. You had to keep an eye on things. Risk a trip indoors to freshen up your drink and you might return to find that the hamburgers had gone supernova, the skewered vegetables reduced to curls of ash.

Hey, it's not on fire!

Hey, it’s not on fire!

A nice, medium heat makes more things possible. Cooking on planks, for example. I’d often seen friends do this and secretly regarded it as a dumb affectation. But for stuff like fish and shrimp you can’t beat it. Basically you buy these slabs of cedar for $2.50 a pop, soak them in water for an hour or two, then slap them on the grill. After a few minutes, you turn over the planks and adorn them with whatever you have in the way of seafood.

With previous grills, this would have produced a nice quick blaze and a torrent of obscenity from the grillmaster. With the Weber, it cooks salmon and shrimp to perfection, with a delicious smoky flavor to boot. The fish doesn’t stick to the grill, and it can’t fall through the grate. Amazing! I am now a plank evangelist. Which is about the only sort of evangelism I will ever embrace.

More along these lines:

Comments

  1. “With previous grills, I had essentially two choices: ambient outside temperature and about 700 degrees.” I laughed out loud at that line.

    My brother grills almost daily, out here in So. Cal. where we have a similar grilling season. I’ll have to ask him if he knows about planks.

  2. I haven’t tried the planks but just about everything else—that ‘indirect’ heat method makes everything possible, including a Thanksgiving turkey. Enjoy–great purchase!