Smoked Cheese

2.5 lbs Tillamook colby jack smoked over hickory dust for 3 hours. I like to use the a-maze-n smoker in my unplugged big chief. Now the long 3 week wait begins...

Nicely done !

Why do you have to wait 3 weeks?

It takes that long for the smoke flavor to mellow out and evenly distribute throughout the cheese. Otherwise it is just a really harsh flavor on the outside layer. Vacuuming helps. Some people claim to wait only 2 weeks, but I've always waited a bit longer. Makes a mean grilled cheese sammich and it's stupid easy as long as you can keep the temp down.

Once vac packed, do you freeze the cheese and wait 3 weeks, or keep it in the fridge for the 3 weeks?

Into the fridge it goes. Now is the time for cheese smoking. Once the ambient temp gets much above 70 degrees the cheese starts to melt with the added heat generated by smoldering wood. I keep my smoker in the shade to help keep it from melting, but you can still tell it softened up and sweated a bit. A guy could do a batch in the fall and be pretty popular around Thanksgiving too.

Nice.............I'll have to try this. Good luck,

SZ

Me too SZ. I've smoked some cheeses before that came out way too smoky, so this sounds like a great tip...

Two more days until my batch is ready. If anybody else tries this, I would be interested to hear what kind of cheese you chose and how it turned out.

Nick - If your cheese was too smoky for you, definitely let it sit for 3 weeks. The smoke generator I use only puts out a little smoke and they are designed for this sort of thing. And the price is right too! You can borrow mine if you want to give it a try. I see your just down the road from me. You can see it sitting in the bottom of the big chief in the first picture.

After reading BGR's post, I got the smoked cheese bug and decided to smoke up a cube of Cheddar and Colby Jack.

I have a Cookshack smoker. It's electric and uses dry wood chunks. In order to keep the heat down, I have a stainless steel insulated baffle that slides in where the bottom rack goes.

Since my smoker is digitally controlled, I had to take some additional steps and measures to prevent the smoker from getting past 90 degrees or so.

Step 1: Purchase big ol' block of cheese and quarter it length wise. Arrange on a rack.
Step 2. Add a couple of chunks of hickory to the smoker. Slide in the baffle and place a full pan/bowl of ice on top of the baffle. This is necessary to keep the oven temperature low after the wood starts smoking.
Step 3. Place the rack of cheese in the smoker and turn on to 225 or so. Doesn't really matter too much, as long as the heating process starts the wood to smoke.
Step 4. Watch the smoker. Set the timer for 20 minutes as soon as you see smoke starting to come out the vent hole
Step 5. Turn off the smoker after 20 minutes of smoking. Let the cheese bask in the smokey goodness for another 30 minutes or so.
Step 6. Repeat steps 3-5.
Step 7. Repeat steps 3-5.

After 3 doses of "smoke", the cheese looked great!

Step 8. Vac pack up the cheese and place in the fridge.

Step 9. Wait 3 weeks and give it a try.

OH MY GAWD!!!!!!!

Freakin' amazing smoked cheese!

Sounds good Paker