Hi folks,
First post, first time smoking anything besides tobacco and it's been quite a while since I did that.
I'm smoking cheese today in Saskatchewan, Canada and it's in the neighbourhood of 10 below zero Fahrenheit, so no real issues with melting the cheese.
Here's my rig: For a smoke box, I have a small Camp Chef barbeque box, the kind that sits on top of my big Camp Chef stove and gets it's heat from the stove burner. For smoke, I made a tube smoker, because I happened to have a little 1/8" stainless steel screen laying around along with some 1 1/2" copper pipe. Easy peasey. That part works great. I'm burning Traeger Applewood pellets and get 4 hours of real nice smoke, (at least I think it's real nice smoke, but what the heck do I really know, right. That's why I'm here.:biggrin:
So the smoke box sits on my blacksmithing forge in my shop because of the chimney. The smoke box sits on top of the smoke tube, which sits on a grill so that I have air in the smoke box (open bottom on the smoke box. With the furnace in the shop, I can do something about the cold ambient temps. For the task today, I'm keeping it about 4 degrees above freezing, which allows me to keep the temp in my smoke box about 55 Fahrenheit.
Here's my dilemma. Smoking Cheddar, Feta and a couple of those little Baby Bel nuggets. I've read where you should unwrap the cheese and leave it in the fridge overnight to kind of dry out a little, so that's what I did. The Feta and the Baby Bels looked fine in the morning, but the cheddar looked all dried out and cracked. I'm wondering if that's because the cheddar is a "light" cheddar so less milk fat??
Anyway I 've just pulled the cheddar after 4 hours. The other was pulled out after 1 hour. Like I said, the cheddar looks kind of sad.
Is it worth saving?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.
First post, first time smoking anything besides tobacco and it's been quite a while since I did that.
I'm smoking cheese today in Saskatchewan, Canada and it's in the neighbourhood of 10 below zero Fahrenheit, so no real issues with melting the cheese.
Here's my rig: For a smoke box, I have a small Camp Chef barbeque box, the kind that sits on top of my big Camp Chef stove and gets it's heat from the stove burner. For smoke, I made a tube smoker, because I happened to have a little 1/8" stainless steel screen laying around along with some 1 1/2" copper pipe. Easy peasey. That part works great. I'm burning Traeger Applewood pellets and get 4 hours of real nice smoke, (at least I think it's real nice smoke, but what the heck do I really know, right. That's why I'm here.:biggrin:
So the smoke box sits on my blacksmithing forge in my shop because of the chimney. The smoke box sits on top of the smoke tube, which sits on a grill so that I have air in the smoke box (open bottom on the smoke box. With the furnace in the shop, I can do something about the cold ambient temps. For the task today, I'm keeping it about 4 degrees above freezing, which allows me to keep the temp in my smoke box about 55 Fahrenheit.
Here's my dilemma. Smoking Cheddar, Feta and a couple of those little Baby Bel nuggets. I've read where you should unwrap the cheese and leave it in the fridge overnight to kind of dry out a little, so that's what I did. The Feta and the Baby Bels looked fine in the morning, but the cheddar looked all dried out and cracked. I'm wondering if that's because the cheddar is a "light" cheddar so less milk fat??
Anyway I 've just pulled the cheddar after 4 hours. The other was pulled out after 1 hour. Like I said, the cheddar looks kind of sad.
Is it worth saving?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.