I just returned from a week long smoke fest from the Pacific Northwest. My father and I smoked all week long on the PG500. One of our goals was for me to teach him smoke cheese. I smoked cheese on my SM025 and SM150 with success. Converting to using an Amaze-N-Pellet smoker and the PG500 was going to be a challenging and an exciting test. I did what others suggested and placed the Amaze-N-Pellet smoker in zone one just above the fire box but below the grate and deflector. I removed the grate and deflector for the cold smoke. I placed our cheese in zone 4. It was a cool 50 degrees in the morning at 6am. The inside of the smoker never went above 60 degrees for the full 2 hours. We did not use any ice trays or ice containers. The cheese was perfect. I even used the drawer below zone 1 to control the air flow. I opened it about 1 inch to 1.5 inches. This gave me the best results with the most smoke production.
As a test we placed 5 mozzarella string cheese sticks in zone 4 with the rest of our 1 lb block of various cheeses. THIS WAS BRILLIANT! The next day we did 50 mozzarella string cheese sticks.
Out of everything we cooked this week, from pork butts, brisket, steaks, pig candy, chicken, almonds, the smoked string cheese was by far our favorite and most talked about item. That's not to say the others weren't great! Because they were. It's just the smoked string cheese gave us a surprising result and a laugh every time we pulled one out of the fridge.
GIVE IT A SHOT!
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