The Fire Starter

Yesterday I was trying out a cedar plank for the first time on the grill with a lovely recipe called Sun-dried Tomato Salmon. I followed the instructions to a T on how to use the plank and how long to cook the salmon. Not sure why the recipe says put your grill on high heat as my grill gets up to EIGHT HUNDRED degrees. Nevertheless, I did as the instructions said.

However, when I went to check on it after the allotted 15 minutes, the cedar plank was burnt to a crisp and was on fire (you are supposed to be able to reuse the plank several times), and it broke into little tiny pieces upon touching it with a spatula. Worse than that, the sun-dried tomatoes were burnt to a sad, sad crisp.

Luckily I was able to salvage most of the salmon as it was stuck to the wood like a piece of gum on a shoe. The salmon tasted ok, if you like that sort of thing, blackened that is.