Smoked Cheese

[Cynnau]

New owner here and as funny as it sounds having the cold smoker on my Traeger sold me, I mean cheese is life.

Here is my question, I attempted to do some smoked cheese over the weekend and I tried it right away (I know probably big mistake) but I could not taste any "Smoke" flavor.

So here I am, asking the ones who know how the heck do you smoke cheese? I have an 885 (I think it is) and the bottom of it is a cold smoker. I did try to search the forums, but some recent ones talk about using ice, but if I have a cold smoker area would I still need it? I watched the temperature on it, and it did stay low, roughly 110 or so, so I know it did not get hot (I was cooking in the top of the grill at a much higher temperature).

So any advice on how to smoke? Should I close the top part where smoke would come out to make more smoke? Any tips, best practices?

Thank you in advance!

 

[ExUnifliter]

Don’t have any experience with the Traeger cold smoker, but when I do cheese, I use a full smoke tube full of pellets in my cold Traeger.
Plenty of continuous smoke for up to four hours. If I remember correctly, the ambient temperature of the smoker has to stay below 100*, so really hot sunny days generally won’t give favorable results. I have learned not to place the cheese(s) directly above the tube.
When done smoking, I wrap the cheeses in butcher paper or cheesecloth and put in the brown paper bags for two to three days in the fridge. Then, the hard part…I vacu-seal the blocks individually, and don’t touch for at least two weeks to great effect.
Good luck!

 

[traeger860]

https://www.traeger.com/recipes/cold-smoked-cheese

 

[tomhooper]

When you say the 885 do you mean the Century 885? If so that lower compartment is just a warming chamber. I was not aware it was considered a smoking chamber. Hell I store stuff heat won't hurt in mine like grill cleaning stuff.