Sunday, February 17, 2008

Smoked Cheese

Here is another post I've been meaning to get up for awhile. We had a lot of company over thanksgiving and I wanted to have some snacks around for all the football we were going to watch. It had been awhile since I smoked some cheese and I thought that would be good to munch on. I couple days later I smoked a chub of bologna (sadly, no pics) and made the best bologna and cheese sammies.

You can smoke pretty much any cheese you want, as far as I know. I chose a block of extra sharp cheddar (my favorite), pepper jack (always a hit), and swiss. The cheddar and jack were from Sam's, so they were huge. I cut them in half to maximize the smoke flavor. I "borrowed" a cooling rack from Mrs. Hog (shhh, don't tell her) to get the cheese up off of the grate.


The most important thing when smoking cheese is to build a very, very small fire. Basically you don't want any heat, just the smoke. It was pretty easy this time because it was in the 20s outside. I burned down some charcoal, added 3 or 4 briquettes and one small piece of hickory to the firebox. The aluminum foil is just there to keep the stuff from falling through the basket as it burns down.


Simply add small pieces of wood when needed. I replaced the charcoal once as well. With a little practice you'll learn what works for you and how long you need to smoke the cheese to get the flavor you want. I like mine pretty smoky, so I went 2 hours or so on these. Mmmmmm, cheese.



5 comments:

Chris said...

I just told my wife that I wanted to try smoking some cheese yesterday. Thanks for sharing your technique. Seems like it would be easier to do in my offset than my BGE.

Hogwild said...

Chris,

I've never cooked on an Egg, but I'd imagine it would be easier on the offset. Little or no heat is what you want. I'm not gonna lie...I have melted a bunch of cheese before. It's a frickin' mess. It was pretty easy doing it when it was cold outside.

Hog

Hogwild said...

Oh, and I highly recommend smoking a chub of bologna before or after the cheese. Smoked bologna and smoked cheese sammies are fantastic.

Sal Cartusciello said...

Ok, these are the items we were eating before Morgan lost all of her weight, and I started eating healthier. You are killing me. :-)

Hogwild said...

You guys can still eat them!! Just don't eat a whole lot of em'.

Give Morgan my congrats on losing all the weight. That takes a lot of willpower.