Alaska's signature — a fillet of wild salmon set on a soaked cedar plank and cooked over fire, the smoking wood perfuming the fish as it bastes in its own oils, glazed with butter and a touch of maple. The Pacific-Northwest and Alaska Native method.
Cooking salmon lashed to a cedar plank over fire is a Pacific Northwest and Alaska Native tradition stretching back generations — the smouldering wood steams the fish and perfumes it with sweet resin. The plank is soaked, then set close to the flames.
Lift a forkful off the plank and the salmon flakes in rich, deep-orange leaves, kissed with cedar smoke, the butter-maple glaze giving a faint sweet sheen. Bite: lush and fatty wild salmon, smoky and aromatic from the wood, sweet-savory from the glaze, bright with lemon. The taste of Alaska's rivers cooked over fire.
The soaked plank smolders rather than burns, gently smoking the salmon and insulating it from direct heat so it stays moist. Wild Alaskan salmon's high fat content bastes the flesh from within; the maple-butter glaze caramelizes lightly for a sweet-savory crust.
Variations
With a brown-sugar rub. With dill. With king (chinook) salmon. Hot-smoked. With honey. Plain grilled.
On the Palate
Where Cedar-Plank Salmon sits in the Alaskan flavor cloud
Soak the plank properly and keep the fire moderate so the wood smolders and smokes instead of catching flame — that slow smoke is what steams the salmon moist and perfumes it.
Ingredients
Serves 4How it's made
8 steps · 25 min active + 1 hour 5 min waiting
- 160 min
Soak an untreated cedar plank in water at least 1 hour.
Watch outThe plank should sink or feel heavy when fully soaked; a floating dry board will burn.
- 23 min
Season a 600 g wild salmon fillet with salt.
- 33 min
Mix soft butter with a little maple syrup and lemon.
- 44 min
Heat a grill (or oven) to medium-high.
- 53 min
Set the salmon skin-side down on the plank; brush with the butter glaze.
- 618 min
Cover and cook over the fire 15-20 min until just opaque and the plank smokes.
Watch outWait for the plank's edges to smoke and the flesh to turn from glossy-translucent to matte-opaque.
- 72 min
Brush again with glaze and squeeze lemon over.
- 82 min
Serve straight from the smoking plank.
