Cold Smoking Again

There’s a type of procrastination that isn’t down to laziness or fear of failure. It is simply a “I don’t know if this will work”.

Some may lump this in with fear, but when it is something really trivial, it is hard to justify this. It is more “I have a solution to how to do this, in theory, but if I try it, I may find it isn’t a solution” rationalisation.

It is over a year since I cold smoked anything. My cold smoker is a simple ProQ Cold Smoke Generator, a mesh maze tray that you pack the wood dust into. But the smoker box that it came with, and that I had been using, is basically a cardboard box with metal grate inserts.

I can’t really knock it – it worked for a good while. But being cardboard, it was only good for fair-weather smoking, and over the years it’s got a bit manky. At least part of that is how I have stored it.

I became aware that many people use the CSG in a normal BBQ, and decided to give it a try. But I never did. I use a pellet grill, which would be switched off during this process (we are talking COLD smoking). The cardboard box was a vertical arrangement with ventilation by the tray and out the top. Would my pellet grill, which is more of a horizontal thing, have the same ventilation to keep the CSG smouldering? Should I enable the grill’s fan, or would that be too much?

All these questions could be answered simply by trying it out, but even then I kept putting it off.

Anyway, I have 5 packets of cheese and 2 blocks of butter currently on the grill smoking. No fan, and the CSG is producing smoke like a train. My recent addition – the double shelf unit – also means the cheese is above the CSG, not alongside it.

It only took me 18 months to get around to it!

1 Comment

  1. Cheese is now vacuum packed and in the fridge.

    While the butter didn’t melt (it started off as a cool day here, but got progressively warmer), it did lose its shape somewhat, so the 4 half-sticks have been mixed together in small food box as a mould. Once it is chilled and solid again, I will cut it into pieces for wrapping individually.

    Hmmm – I may look out for butter moulds for the future.

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