Plank Grilled Blue Cheese Caprese

Plank Grilled Blue Cheese Caprese is a fun way to enjoy Caprese as an appetizer or a salad. The combination of sweet tomatoes, savory melted blue cheese, and smoky grilled onions is simply divine! Serve it as an appetizer at a dinner party and all of your guests will love you! And, it’s super simple too. This is a salad you’ll make again and again.

So, there I was, thinking about some of my favorites foods. Juicy heirloom tomatoes, so colorful; so sweet in the summer; so luscious. Savory blue cheese, pungent and earthy. Grilled onions, a little sweet with a little bite. Fresh basil, the perfect herb for tomatoes. And, I figured that everyone who wants to try a Caprese salad has tried it. It is my favorite salad. And, we did serve it at my wedding (was that really 15 years ago??? How can that be possible???). When I thought, you know, it would be fun to make a blue cheese version of the caprese. Oh, and how fun would it be to grill it on a plank!

Now, the plank I used in these pictures is a maple plank. But, really, the plank isn’t on the grill for very long, it isn’t imparting too much flavor to the caprese, so, any kind of wood plank can be used for this Plank Grilled Blue Cheese Caprese. Cedar is the most common. But there’s maple, cherry wood, Alder, Apple wood. You can check out different ones here on my Amazon affiliate links. I love these live edge round planks, and think I need to get some of these soon. They would be awesome for this grilled caprese.

Normally I would tell you to soak the wooden planks for 30-60 minutes. But, since these are just on the grill for a little while, you can soak them as you grill the onions. No big pre-planning necessary for this dish.

A great tip for you for the plank after you’ve served and eaten the Plank Grilled Blue Cheese Caprese — save the used plank to use as flavor wood chunks for your charcoal grill or smoker. It also works well to throw the used plank in a fire pit.

I’ve had a hard time with blue cheese, sometimes it just doesn’t taste good to me. So, I thought I’d share my favorite kind with you – Cambozola. It’s creamy, it luscious, it’s soft. And, it isn’t too harsh. Keep an eye out for this kind.

Here are the onions as they get all toasty on the grill. This is also a great way to do onions for burgers!

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Plank Grilled Blue Cheese Caprese

Author Debi

Ingredients

• 1 wooden plank
• 1 sweet yellow onion cut into 4 lengthwise slices
• salt and pepper
• Heirloom tomatoes sliced into thick slices
• about 2 ounces Blue cheese crumbled (more or less to your liking)
• fresh basil leaves

Instructions

1. Place the plank in a large container of cool water and allow to soak while you work on the rest of the recipe.
2. Sprinkle the sliced onion with salt and pepper. Heat grill to medium-high. Place the onion slices directly on the grill grates, and grill until they start to char and soften a bit. Using tongs, carefully flip onion slices, trying to keep all the rings together, to char on the other side. Once the onions have grilled to your liking, carefully remove them from the grill.
3. Remove plank from water, and wipe excess water away with a clean towel. Place a tomato slice, then a grilled onion slice on the plank. Continue alternating tomato slices and onion slices. Sprinkle with crumbled blue cheese.
4. Place plank directly on the grill grates, and heat until the cheese begins to melt, and the plank starts to dry out. Once the cheese is good and melty, remove the plank from the grill using oven mitts or tools (be careful, it's hot!). I like to place the plank on a wooden cutting board so I can easily move it to the table.
5. Sprinkle fresh basil, a little more salt, and some pepper over the top. Serve warm.

Recipe Notes

The recipe is easily doubled depending on how many people you want to serve or how big your plank is.