Bob Kiefer was just another smoke jockey 14 years ago, slowly applying heat to a pork butt and beer to himself in varying intervals, when his then-girlfriend asked if he could smoke cheese.
“I just started experimenting on a standard upright smoker,” Kiefer says, “and that worked — incredibly poorly.”
The staples of cattle cookery — hickory and oak chips — overpowered the mild flavor of most cheeses. Only sharp cheddar stood up to the smoke, and even then the resulting substance was smoky first and cheddary second. He tried resting the cheese on pans of ice in the smoker, but the heat still robbed it of its creaminess.
“You usually cook meat at 225 degrees for so many hours,” he says. “If you cook cheese at 225 degrees, you’ll just have a runny mess in the bottom of your smoker. Thankfully, I never did that.”
Still, he says, “I ruined a lot of cheese for seven years. But I stuck with it.”
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