Smoked Cheese

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After enjoying another super yummy batch of smoked cheese at a family celebration, we finally decided to give this a shot. We found this great little smoker that we could use in our Traeger (any BBQ shell really), but without turning on heat and risking cheese melt. It’s called the A-Maze-N Stainless Steel smoker and we picked one up at Ace for a little over $20. What a good buy! The cheese turned out great. Here’s what we did:

  1. Bought a few 16oz blocks of cheese (on a digital coupon sale at Albertsons for $4.99 so that was super nice)
  2. We did regular Cheddar and Monterey Jack
  3. First, we filled the A-Maze-N Smoker with pellets. We used what we had on-hand which was Traeger Signature flavor pellets
  4. We lit the open-ended top of the mini smoker tube with a long BBQ ligher, holding it for like 30 seconds but it wouldn’t stay lit. So fail there. Then, we got out some butane fuel (probably could have just used lighter fluid but didn’t have that), poured a little over that top section, and bam! It lit up and stayed burning.
  5. We laid the smoker on the racks in the Traeger (furtherst part away from the chimney), closed the lid and let it burn for about 10 minutes while we prepped the cheese.
  6. Prepping the cheese involved taking it out of the packaging and putting it on a wire rack. Then we filled one of those disposable aluminum barbeque pans (Weber makes them) with ice and laid the rack of cheese over the top.
  7. After 10 minutes, we transferred the rack of cheese over ice tray into the smoker between the smoke tube and chimney, closed the lid, and set a time for 1 hour (but went 1.5 hours)
  8. At the 1.5 hour mark, we checked on things and cheese was turning color and not melting at all! We flipped the cheese over and then set the timer for another 1.5 hours (so total of 3 hours smoking).
  9. At the 3 hour mark the smoker was still going strong. We removed the cheese and immediately vacumm sealed it (I’m sure wrapping in regular plastic wrap, bags, or even parchment would work too), and then tucked it away in the refrigerator.
  10. Meanwhile, we just let the tube “smoke out and chill” the rest of the evening in the traeger and dumped the ash (not much left) the next day.
  11. We were going to give it at least 3 days to let the smoke flavor build but actually managed to hold off for 7 days! At my brother’s birthday we broke out the cheese (for gifts) and enjoyed with crackers and smoked salmon as an appetizer!

Notes:

It would be fun to try other pellets to see how that changes the smoke flavor.

The cheddar wasn’t sharp but got more crumbly after smoking so that was kind of interesting.

So summary:

  1. Get the A-Maze-N Stainless Steel smoker
  2. Have some pellets to fill it with
  3. Will need some kind of lighter fluid and lighter
  4. Can smoke in a Traeger but sounds like any smoker or even gas/charcoal BBQ will work fine
  5. Buy cheese in big blocks and ideally on-sale
  6. Smoke for 3 hours and allow to “age” in the refrigerator for 3 – 7 days
  7. Enjoy!