I'll have the planks, thanks

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.

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.