The Best Way to Grill Salmon This Season

Hey, I'm Matt with MeChurch. Let's grill hot honey salmon. Pretty excited to be jumping back into our summer grilling series that we've not done in a couple of summers. So it's a really cool playlist with a lot of lighter things to grill for the summer. We love to cook fish. We love to cook oysters. We love to cook shrimp, all sorts of stuff like that. They never get the clicks that a brisket do, but we've got a much deeper depth of cooking knowledge than just cooking brisket. And we know a lot of you like to do it. So we're going to jump right in. I just got home from an epic fifth year in Haudenosaunee, British Columbia, Canada. It's an itty bitty island almost to Alaska. Went there with my oldest son. It was a guest chef event where I cook for the group on two different nights. Do a ton of fishing. We limited out on salmon, lean cod and halibut. We're actually going to show you how to cook all of those on this channel. But today I'm very excited. Came home with some absolutely beautiful Chinook salmon. Chinook in the States called Kings. We were out with our man Cohen, who put us on the fish. Super epic trip. We needed two fish to finish off the trip. And Christian and I ended up on a double header. I had this fish on. And while I was fighting this salmon, he got hooked on. And so we ended a super memorable trip on an epic double header thanks to Cohen. So it was a ton of fun. Today's recipe is going to be the easiest thing you've ever cooked in your life. And I'm going to make a lot of you fall in love with salmon because I think some people don't like it because they don't know how to cook it right. And no, we're not going to be pouring boiling water to get the skin off and throwing an air fryer. We're going to cook it like a man outside and show you a really delicious way for your family to enjoy this. First things first, I've thawed this out under cool water. I'm going to cut it open. The West Coast Fishing Club, they portion these out in these one pound packages and you fly home with it just like normal luggage. So if you want to fish with me beginning of the summer next year, go to westcoastfishingclub.com, ask for my buddy Derek and you literally can get on this trip. But great thing about this, this comes right out of the ocean, gets put right into here. This smells just like when I was on the boat on Thursday. This is like four days ago. I caught this fish. Doesn't get any fresher. I mean, absolutely beautiful. So I'm going to run over here, rinse it off and we're going to cook. Got our salmon rinsed off here. You can see super pretty. This is skin on salmon. When I grill salmon, I like to leave the skin on it because it acts as a barrier. You can go skinless or skin off if you want. No problem. I'm also going to do this on a cedar plank. If you're cooking on a pellet grill, you could also do this on a piece of butcher paper. But this is not going to be in really enough time to impart flavor. But really, again, just kind of added protection makes this super simple. OK, we're going to season this with our honey hog hot. Not that hot. It should be called honey hog jalapeno. We're going to go with a pretty decent amount based on the flavor profile that we're going with. Put some on the end here. I'm going to let that it here. We also have a seafood season. It is certainly very delicious. It's very much like Old Bay, but it kicked up Old Bay. But this is great on this. If you don't want to go with a hot version, you can just go with honey hog. But I'm telling you, it's not going to be hot. It's just going to be interesting. We're going to let this sit here for just a few minutes. I'm going to kind of encourage it. And once you see it nice and wet, it's going to be good to go. But let's talk about cooking this. I mentioned earlier the way I'm going to make you fall in love with this. Here's the tip to salmon. You don't want to overcook this. When you go in to smoke the salmon, if you start seeing the white pockets or the albuter and the fat showing up, it's starting to get dry. It's kicking out the fat and it's gone a little too far. I like to take my salmon in the low 130s. That way, when you are eating it, it's nice and juicy. If you cook it too far, like over 145, it's going to be dried out. Need an instant thermometer to make sure you're nailing that desired doneness. But now let's jump in to cook. You can grill this on whatever you want. If you're grilling it on an open flame with charcoal or something like that, you're going to want to soak your cedar plank. That way it doesn't catch on fire. But today we're going in a pellet grill, won't catch fire. So you don't have to do anything to it. I'm cooking 275 degrees, which I always say is a middle of the road. It's smoky enough, but hot enough to not be in there that long. We're cooking with meat church pellets with our new version that are pecan and cherry, so little lighter smoke. Beautiful flavor will be absolutely perfect for this. And around 125 degrees, we're going to glaze it. We're doing nothing in between. You could baste with butter if you want. Added bonus, we're not going to. So I'm throwing it in. I'll see you back at 125 to glaze. We've been cooking about 45 minutes and using our instant reed right here in the thickest part of the salmon. You can see 125, 126. So it's time to glaze. I'm going to use my buddy, Chef Chase Fire Honey. You can use any honey you want, any hot honey you can pick up. This stuff's super delicious, and I love supporting small business. I'll put a link down in the description for this. Also in the recipe, and we're just going to glaze it. Oh, baby, tell me that doesn't look sexy. Much like barbecue sauce. I'm just going to put it on here for the last few minutes of the cook. I'll let it tack up. Glazing it like a show car, baby. Going to give that five, 10 minutes and pull it. All right, we let that honey tack up for about eight, 10 minutes or so. So let's pull it out. And as you can see, there's absolutely beautiful, perfectly cooked. Final temperature ends up in the 130s or so. And as you can see, no fat popping out of it anywhere. Looks super beautiful. Going to be a little bit hot. So we're going to let it cool off and then dive in. All right. I've let it cool off. I'm super excited about this. This is going to be incredibly rewarding because I've literally just caught this fish. Let me tell you something. I always say the flies know what I'm cooking in my backyard, but when you introduce a little bit of honey, they coming. That's OK. Here we go. Damn, that is epic. It's got a little sizzle, like a little back in heat, like two, three chews in. See how pretty pink that is. Ooh, that honey hog hot. You see, I have not reached for my water. It's just warm enough to let you know it's there. It's not like hot and that fire honey on top by Chef J. I'm a massive fan of that stuff. We're putting the link below for that so you guys can check it out. You can get it at a barbecue supply shop. That is super good. You guys got to do this. Show you the beauty inside there. West Coast Fishing Club dot com. You guys should come fish with me next June. It is truly a bucket list trip. And I say that the term bucket list gets thrown out a lot. Going up there and on this trip. Take your dad, take your brother, take your son. You will never forget it. Anyway, big fan of this going in the summer grilling series. We got a couple more coming for you the next few weeks. Be sure to check that out, too. In the meantime, I'm going to finish this salmon. Please like and subscribe. Thanks for being here. Check out our podcast. See you guys next week.