Three letters sum it up: O-I-L. To cook a show-stopping, stunning whole salmon on the grill this Labor Day, you need to overcome your ambivalence to oil.

You've failed before: Put a glistening, fresh from-tip-to-tail salmon on the grill, only to have it turn into a mangled mess of carbonized skin and flaking flesh. You leave half of it on the grate and transfer a fish hash onto a serving plate. Disaster.

You can succeed this time, but you must love oil. Copious, flowing amounts of it -- as in one cup. If your grill is in bad shape, you'll need about 1 1/2 cups. All of it is going to season the grates on the grill to keep the fish from getting stuck to whatever you put between it and the flames.