Smoking Cheese

Yes  you read that right, I just smoked my first cheese on my Pit. I had bee reading about it for awhile and decided to give it a shot.

You can smoke almost any type of cheese so I choose three of my favorites, Gouda, Cheddar and Provolone

The term  used when smoking cheese is "Cold Smoking" as you have to keep your pit temp under 90 or your cheese will start to melt.

I simply cut my cheeses in to a few smaller parts as I wanted to use a general purpose rub on a couple of the chunks just for fun.

I let my cheese warm up at room temp for about an hour in order to induce more smoke into the cheese during the process. I put in about half a chimney of charcoal and then put in a large chuck of soaked wood.

I was able to control the temp of my smoke  fairly easily with the damper between the firebox and smoker box, however the temp was a cold 29 out so that made this part easier. I would image smoking cheese would be very difficult in warmer weather.

I smoked for about 2 hours and 15 minutes, but I would not hesitate to go longer (up to 3 hours)

Here is the finished product

The Cheese turned out great!

Smoking Eggs

As you can see in the picture above I also like smoking eggs. This process is also very easy and I put the eggs on my pit at the same time the cheese was finishing up.

I get the Pit up to about 250 degrees lay the eggs (pun intended) on the grate and use lots of smoke for about 2  hours..

Here are the finished eggs

These beauties are awesome in Egg Salad and my Smoked Deviled Eggs (see previous post)

Cheers
Randy