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Smoked Cheese Recipe
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5 from 1 vote

Smoked Cheese Recipe

Smoked cheese is a delicious and infrequent treat for most, which is why you can easily urn an opportunity to smoke some cheese into a way of making presents for those you care about during the winter holidays-or any other holidays for that matter.

Prep Time10 mins
Cook Time2 hrs
Course: Appetizer
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Smoke Cheese
Servings: 1
Calories: 321kcal

Equipment

  • A tube smoker

Ingredients

  • 2″x4″ blocks

    Cheese

Instructions

  • The first tip is to plan to look at the weather.

  •  You want to smoke cheese on a day that will not reach higher than 60ºF.

  • Warm temperatures can increase the chances of your cheese going from a smoke to a melt.

  • Cut the rind away from whatever cheese you plan to smoke and then chop it into small wedges and 2″x4″ blocks.

  •  If you prefer soft interiors and smokey skin, then break up your cheese into larger sizes.

  • If your cheese happens to have been chilled, bring it up to a room temperature while wicking away any moisture that results from the thawing dried cheese yields better skin.

  • You will be using a tube smoker for this process, roughly a foot tall.

  • If you lack a tube smoker, you can use a large can like what you might have after emptying the contents of a can of pineapple slices.

  • Load the smoker with your ideal wood for the cheese you intend to smoke.

  • Light the smoker as its instructions say, or do a quick search for this detail if going with the improvised approach and place the tube smoker into your grill.

  •  Make sure that its flame is put out and the smoke is light yet continual in output.

  • Place your bricked and wedged cheeses onto your grill’s grates, making sure to keep them away from touching the sides and exposed to air flow.

  • Close the lid and allow the wood smoke to go to town on the cheese.

  • Two hours is a good waiting time, too much smoke and the cheese can develop an overwhelming level of smokiness.

  • If you only want a mild smokiness to your cheese, give it one hour.

  • It is also worth mentioning that softer cheeses require less time than hard ones to reach an appropriate level of smokiness; if most of what you have on the grill is on the soft side, consider veering closer to 1 hour and change than a full 2 hours.

  • It is crucial that the smoker never gets above 90ºF. 

  • You want to smoke the cheese, not melt it.

  • While 1-2 hours is recommended for a complete smoke, it is also important that your cheeses become fully exposed to that smoke.

  • Do your best to rotate the cheese every 15 to 30 minutes.

  • This will ensure that no one side becomes more smoky than the others.

  • If you want to check to see if the cheese has been sufficiently smoked, remove a piece from the grill and give it a smell; if what your nose detects smells downright satisfyingly smokey and delicious, the cheese is done smoking.

  • It’s also worth noting that the presence of moisture on cheese will cause smoke to cling to it far more than dried cheese, to the detriment of that cheese’s initial flavor.

  • When time’s up on the smoking process, remove the cheeses from the grill and wrap them up in paper, either parchment or untreated butcher’s paper; these are materials that allow them to breathe.

  • Place the wrapped cheese into your refrigerator for one to two days.

  • When time is up on the fridge, take the cheese out and vacuum seal it.

  • If you lack a vacuum sealer, you can use a resealable freezer bag and simply push out all of the air within the bag.

  • One trick to removing the air from such a bag is to submerge all but its zipper in water, push up to expel the air, then zip up the bag.

  • Feel free to take a bite as you bag up your cheeses for long storage, you’ve earned it.

  • Take a marker or something else that can leave a mark in your sealing bags and label each bag with the type of cheese it contains and also feel free to write down the date of the original smoking.

  • Put the bagged cheeses back into your refrigerator and give them a fortnight, that’s two full weeks, 14 days.

  • Managing to stop yourself from indulging in your cheese before this time elapses will provide enough time for even the most initially-acrid of cheeses to have its smokiness more evenly distributed throughout the entirety of the cheese, resulting in a different, yet still-mellow flavor.

  • Serve your smoked cheese however you want: sliced up for sandwiches, crumbled up for salads, paired with crackers, the list of options goes on and on.

Nutrition

Serving: 100g | Calories: 321kcal