Smoking the Cheddar, part One

If i have one guilty pleasure, it is cheese.
In truth, i have tons of guilty pleasures... but among them cheese is pretty prominent. Cheese is one of the things i will splurge on if i have the opportunity. And with summer here, there is nothing better than a smoked cheddar and apple grilled cheese sandwich for a quick and easy lunch or dinner. Unfortunately, smoked cheeses are considerably more expensive than standard cheeses. I was at the grocery store yesterday and looking at cheeses, as i always do, and noticed that the smoked cheddar was like $12 for 8oz, which is pretty pricey. I've been wanting to try my hand at smoking cheeses and salts for a while now. My boyfriend gave me a smoker box as a gift because i'd talked about it so much. I had yesterday and today off, so why not give it a go?

I purchased:

• Sharp White Cheddar - $7 for 12oz

• Mozzarella - $6 for 8oz

• Bag of cherry wood chips - $4.50 for 3lbs

I already had on hand:

• Finely ground sea salt. I would have preferred coarse ground but a large part of this blog is making do with what is currently available. So fine salt it is.

• Smoker box

• Can of olives (we'll discuss this later)

• Old pie tin

• Old cookie sheet

• Wire cooling rack

• Grill with lid

• Charcoal (fancy all-natural charcoal, even!) 

Last night, i followed the directions on the smoker box. I lit one side of the grill and let it get good and hot. I soaked my wood chips for half an hour and then put them in the box and put the box onto the lit side of the grill. I placed the cheese on the cooling rack over a clean cookie sheet, and placed it far away enough from the fire to keep it from melting and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
An hour later, the smoker box had not yet even begun to smoke. The Mozzarella was a melty, greasy mess that had started dripping through the wire rack and made a cheesy puddle on the cooking sheet. Too much heat had built up around inside the grill, and the smoker box was too far away from the heat source to be effective.
I stood there and looked at my $18 mistake for a moment. $18 for a poor kid is a huge sum. That's 3 pairs of Goodwill jeans, or enough gas to get me between school and work for a month, or a whole bag of groceries.
So i did what any smart poor kid does: i scooped up the melted cheese off of the cookie sheet, put it in a plastic ziplock bag, and put it in the fridge to cool. I also removed the semi-solid Cheddar from the rack to cool, and i set the smoker box full of wood chips aside while i planned my next attack.

Mistakes are a good thing. When we meet resistance, we shape ourselves. So i didn't let this mistake keep me from my goal of delicious foodstuffs. I took a break and started fresh this morning with greater wisdom and a fresh perspective.