What is a “Cold Smoker”?

Most people have heard about smoking meats in a BBQ or in a “Hot Smoker” where the food product being smoked is also cooked (usually slowly). Such standbys as smoked pulled pork or ribs, chicken, etc. are a common item to find at many restaurants and cook outs.

But that doesn’t work too good if the product you are trying to smoke melts… like cheese.

How do we then smoke things like cheese? (or chocolate, or butter, etc)?

The answer is a cold smoker - a way of introducing smoke to the food product without adding heat, and therefore not melting or otherwise changing the food.

Cheese is one of the most popular items to use a cold smoker such as the one pictured here, which is one of the many I have built.

The refrigerated cold smoker loaded up with a few blocks of cheese.

There is an inner box where the cheese is placed, and an outer box that contains the cold air from the conditioning unit below that keeps the inner chamber at a nice 65 degrees during the smoking process.