Cedar Plank Salmon

As tradition built it

Cedar Plank Salmon

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• whole salmon, split into a side
• as available water-soaked cedar plank or upright cedar stake
• as available fir boughs (optional, laid over the top)

Method

1. Split a large side of salmon and pin or lace it flat, spread with cross-sticks, to a water-soaked cedar plank or upright cedar stake.
2. Prop the plank near, rather than directly over, an open fire.
3. Cook slowly by radiant heat and smoke, laying fir boughs over the top at times.
4. Treat this as preservation as much as cookery: the slow drying and light smoking keep the flesh through winter.
5. This method was strongly associated with the First Salmon Ceremony marking the season's opening catch, prepared by a method taught to the cook by the community's Salmon Chief, with the bones afterwards returned to the water, head pointed upstream.

Notes

This description is a composite drawn mostly from secondary sources rather than a single primary-sourced technical account with exact plank dimensions and cook times, a gap this chapter states rather than filling with invented precision.

What a modern chef changes

Holding the propped-near-not-over heat, reliably

Rung 1: Cedar plank roasting

Ingredients

• genuine, UK-grown Western red cedar plank

Method

1. This chapter's own extension, not documented Indigenous chef practice: run a Big Green Egg at a low, steady indirect heat with a genuine, UK-grown Western red cedar plank.
2. This reproduces the propped-near-not-over radiant heat of the original fire far more reliably than a domestic oven or a direct grill, since the temperature can be held level for the hours the traditional method actually takes.
3. Go no further than matching the fire: no dehydrator cure, no sous vide step, nothing that would dress the dish up as more than what the technique already is.