Himalayan Salt Plancha

Its no secret we use and cook with a TON of himalayan pink salt at primehouse.  I used to do an amuse of a small salt block that was made very hot by placing it in the oven for 2 hours and then into a high flame on the stove for about 7 minutes.  We placed a piece of kobe sirloin onto this hot salt and sent it out to the dining room with a little stripe of kobayaki sauce.  The guest would flip the meat and then dip it into the sauce, the modern hot rock was born.

Every kitchen has that one piece of equipment that no matter what it just doesnt seem to work right!  No matter how many people try to fix it it just is useless unless you get pretty creative.  We have a gas grill that is exactly that, in order to use it we need to cover it with sheet pans to retain the heat, then put the item we want on it and once finished cooking replace the sheet pan.  Isn’t cooking in a pro kitchen challenging enough that now I’ve created an obsticle course to making a dish?  Dont worry everyone our steaks get cooked in 1 of our 3 broilers, this grill became pan storage.  As a chef how aggrevating is that?  Staring at you every night in the center of the line, taunting you, that useless expensive piece of equipment!  UGGHHHH!

Recently I met a great guy in the salt business, I looked at some samples and loved the products they offered!  I received a huge shipment of Himalayan salt, so many different sizes of salt and great pricing!  Presto the salt plancha was born!  I took 6 pcs of 7″wide by 14″long, 1 inch thick tiles and set them on the grill grates covering the surface of the grill.  Remember I have to cover it with something to get it to stay hot, why not the thick salt/stone which retains heat?  It is a fun sight to see my crew both front and back of house look at me like “what the hell is this crazy (insert word) doing now?”  We had fun trying out different items on the plancha last night.  Maybe now we can finally use this tool for something on the menu or at least some specials instead of pan storage!  What’s the old saying, make lemons out of lemonade?