Cold Smoking Cheese

I love smoked cheese, but it's often more expensive than regular cheese, and at the stores in my area at least, most smoked cheeses are actually soaked in a smoke flavored brine instead of spending time in a smoker. I've found the method I'm about to describe works best for my needs and results in a great tasting cheese.

Your first step is to get your hands on a smoker or barbecue grill. It can be a smoker/grill combo, like the one shown below, or even one of those vertical bullet smokers. Successful cold smoking of cheese can also be done on a regular barbecue grill, as long as you can separate the cheese and heat source by 1 to 2 feet so the cheese doesn't melt. Our goal is to not make cheese sauce here!

You'll then want to decide on what kind of cheese you'd like to smoke, and what kind of wood you'd like to smoke it with. My favorite types of cheeses to smoke are cheddar, Swiss, Monterrey jack, and pepper jack. Don't limit yourself to just those - experiment. Often times I'll buy whatever is on sale and store it until I'm ready to do a smoking session. Put your cheese in the freezer for a few hours, or overnight, and take it out right when you are ready to put it on the smoker. This is an important step for three reasons. First, if there is a flare up and the heat is a bit too high in the smoker, cold cheese won't melt as quickly. Second, if you're doing the smoking during the summer and it's already warm outside, this also helps to keep the cheese from melting as quickly. Finally, smoke particles are attracted to cold objects more than warm or hot objects. By chilling the cheese, you will be attracting more smoke flavor.

Wood is the next decision to make. I buy my wood in chunks, and will smoke with hickory, apple, cherry, mulberry, or a combination of those. Some people like mesquite or oak. If you can't find your wood in chunks, you can buy wood chips and wrap them in foil.

Now it's time to set up the smoker! As far away from where the cheese will be that you can get, place 4 to 6 charcoal briquettes right next to each other, like so:

Light the briquettes and let them get to the stage where they are white:

Then place your wood chunks or foil-wrapped chips on top of the briquettes. I don't soak the wood in advance, and if I use chips and foil, I poke a few holes in the top of the foil to let the smoke out as the wood smolders.

While the wood gets to work, next is the setup of the opposite side of the grill. Use a cooling rack balanced on bricks:

The rack on bricks gives you a place to put the cheese. It elevates the cheese so it doesn't touch the grill itself. This keeps the cheese from getting stuck to the grill, or melting to the grill if it gets too hot. It also gives space for the smoke to get underneath the cheese, providing more coverage and flavor.

Before you place the cheese on the rack, one final step is to place a tray of ice under the rack:

The tray of ice keeps the cheese cool, even though the cheese is frozen, every little bit helps... especially in the summer. In the winter, I might skip the ice step, but still put the tray under the rack. The tray also keeps any melted cheese from dripping down onto the grill and the rest of the smoker should there be an overheating mishap.

Place your cheese on the rack, then close the smoker. You're looking for a white, or bluish white smoke to billow out.

Keep the cheese in there for at least 45 minutes, but you can go up to 90 minutes depending on the outside temperature and how well the cheese is holding up inside. Check your wood chunks or chips and remove any that flare up and replace. You can place any burning chunks into a bucket of water or sand, or even spray the chunks with a little apple juice.

The cheese will look a little darker now, and have some oil on the outside.

I would take the cheese at this point and place it either in plastic zip seal bags or vacuum seal it, then put in the refrigerator or freezer until I needed it.

I hope you try this, and if you have any questions, please let me know!

(The pictures used in this post were taken from two separate smoking sessions I did using two different cameras, one of which was a video camera. The smaller shots are actually grabs from the video itself.)