25 Essentials: Techniques for Planking: Every Technique Paired with a Recipe

by Karen Adler, Judith M. Fertig

Plank cooking is the simplest way to infuse food with a subtle aroma and flavor of smoke. 25 Techniques for Planking  is all you need to start.

The cooking technique simply called planking has already taken the Pacific Northwest by storm and has been getting a major foothold in high-end restaurants nationwide . However, unlike grilling and smoking, planking is an indirect grilling method which gives rise to unique difficulties .

You don't need a fancy rig, special equipment, or complicated directions to start planking. All you really need is a board and 25 Techniques for Planking  to ensure that your favorite meats are cooked to perfection and infused with just the right amount of smokey aroma and flavor.

With this easy-to-follow manual, you will learn to plank-roasting fish, poultry, pork, and much more. A few of the temping recipes you'll find here Planking is the perfect new skill to bring to weekend trips to the cabin, the perfect piece of flair to impress at your next cookout, or simply create delicious, complex food to enjoy, and  25 Techniques for Planking  is the perfect primer.

Genres: Reference, Cookbooks

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[J.S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be the first to admit I'm not much of a cook, and when it comes to bar-b-queing my wife always complains that I only know how to cook one way: well-done. But cooking on a piece of wood? Sounds interesting and can't hurt to try, right?

First off, the book itself is very nice. It's spiral bound but the spiral is *inside* the cover - so you can see it on the shelf and it still has the advantage of lying flat on the counter. The photos are absolutely mouth-watering, and I found myself wanting to try all kinds of things I'd generally pass on. The recipes all seem fairly flexible as well, and can be prepared as printed or modified somewhat (frequently the recipe will suggest substitutions and other ideas, too). In fact, each recipe is listed as a "technique" to present different approaches to planking food - and each gives instructions for cooking on the grill or in the oven.

I also found the discussion in the beginning on direct vs. indirect cooking very helpful (maybe now I can cook something medium-rare for my wife). And the basics of different kinds of wood and the flavors they impart, how to treat the planks, using wood chips, etc. was very informative and helpful. Personally, I would have appreciated some discussion of how to make your own planks and I found it surprisingly difficult to find grilling planks in my local stores (Target was the only one to carry them, and only red cedar).

But, now to the meat of the matter: how were the recipes? I've only had a chance to try a few and with mixed results. My family liked the herb mustard slather on salmon more than I did, and I wasn't sure how much flavor was coming from the wood and how much was the slather. It worked a little better when I did salmon with a store-bought glaze, but again, fish didn't seem to come out as flavorful as I hoped. The recipe that I thought gained the most flavor was the root vegetables (which I probably liked more than the rest of the family), but maybe that was the garlic. Overall, I thought they took much longer to cook than the book said, but that could be due to my grill (or perhaps my grilling "skills"?). Still, I'm going to keep trying more of these recipes, maybe even when we're having people over. After all, cooking on a plank looks pretty impressive!

[Nathan Trachta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book from Amazon's Vine program for free because my wife and I enjoy planking foods and I wanted to learn more techniques for planking. The word technique has a very specific meaning to me; I study Aikido and what we do to uku (a person attacking us) is a technique so to me technique has a strong link to the means of doing something. We'll come back to this;) The book is laid out in a nice fashion, a front section on the Essentials of Planking followed by a section called Techniques for Planking. Each of the 25 techniques provided is a recipe that then talks about the planking technique that the recipe uses. The book and binding are set-up to be used in the kitchen or by your grill and the recipes are easy to follow with most being starters or fish/shellfish based recipes.

Ok, for me this is a 4 star book and pretty solid there. The first section (The Essentials of Planking) does a good job defining planking for people who're new to planking. They cover the types of wood used for planking, buying them, preparing them, and cleaning them. They even define the different ways heating them. The Techniques for Planking gives us a sequential list of the techniques and immediately jumps to the recipe for the technique; wait a minute, you did a nice job earlier setting things up and now when you talk technique (indirect vs. direct, griddle vs. foil, small-plank vs. smoke-planking) you immediately give me a recipe... sorry, I really wish they'd broken each of the different techniques of planking down and then given us a series of recipes using one or more planking techniques. This would have given me the means of improving my planking and supporting what I ultimately got the book for. For that, I took a star away. Recipe wise, those we've used are good. I think they missed some opportunity with this book, having lived in the Pacific Northwest I tend to prefer recipes for planking that show that regions influence. The bottom line, a nice book for the cook, I wish though that they'd gone a little further.

[Mrs. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting too much when I picked up this little book, but it turns out to be a real winner. The recipes are surprisingly sophisticated without being intimidating like something from a Thomas Keller cookbook, and you don't need fifty ingredients to cook dinner, either. Really liked this!