Haven't posted in a while

Well yeah it's been a while since I've posted anything on here. Too much going on right now to post anything useful. I had plans to make some jerky last weekend, but things got really hectic quick and I didn't get a chance to. Maybe this weekend I can finish it up.

Cold smoked cheese

This weekend I was down at the coast and made a side trip over to the Tillamook Cheese factory to get some fresh cheese and squeaky cheese. What's squeaky cheese? you're probably asking. It's simply cheddar cheese curd. It's called squeaky cheese because of the texture, when you eat it, it squeaks on you teeth. Well unless of course you haven't brushed your teeth lately :-) Anyway, it's only available at the factory because it only has a shelf life of a couple days before it dries out and gets nasty. So I picked up a couple packs of curds and a few mini-loafs of my favorite flavors.

Here's what's going on the smoker...

Curds, Garlic Chili Pepper Cheddar and Garlic White Cheddar.Sorry about the mini-loafs being cut, I just couldn't wait to get home and had to sample them on the road.

I've had an A-Maze-N smoker for a while now, and this seemed like a great time to try it. If you haven't seen an A-Maze-N smoker before, it's a cold smoke generator that is built like a maze and uses wood "dust" to generate up to 10 hours of cold smoke. I haven't had a chance to use mine yet, as I said, so this is my trial run on it.

I chose pecan dust for this trial and filled up 3 of the 5 channels will dust, since I figured I'd only smoke this for about 2 hours and didn't need a full load. The fourth channel is just spillover and not full.

I loaded it up and got a nice cherry going with my butane torch. Once that was done I loaded up the cheese and a handful of curds onto my modified splatter shield that I use to smoke things that are too small to fit on the smoker grates.

Into the smoker they go....

This is being done in my Bandera smoker, and I think it should work pretty good as far as keeping things cold. With the A-Maze-N smoker in the side fire box, it should be able to dissipate most of the heat by the time it reaches the cheese in the top of the smoke chamber.  So far so good, it's been in for about 30 minutes and the temp is holding at 48-49 degrees, which is actually 1 degree colder than it was when I first put the temp probe in.

After 2.5 hours of smoke, here's how the cheese looked.

I sampled a piece of the squeaky cheese, and it had a nice amount of smoke. But it was really harsh, like kissing someone that's just taken a drag on a cigarette. But that wasn't unexpected. For some reason when you smoke cheese it has a really harsh smoke flavor to it, but it will mellow out if you let it age for about a week or so. I decided that these had had enough smoke and pulled them out of the smoker. In 2.5 hours I had burned just over 1/2 of one of the channels in the A-Maze-N smoker.

I wanted to save the rest of it (it'll soak up moisture really quick if left out and become unusable), so I knocked the ash and the burning wood out of the tray and I'm letting the rest sit for a bit. Once I feel comfortable that it's not smoldering anymore I'll pour it back into the zip-top bag with the rest of the wood dust.

Here's the finished product.

From here, it got sealed up in the vacuum sealer and will sit in the fridge for a week to mellow out. I can't wait to try it.

Death Dusted Pumpkin Seeds

Habanero Death Dust Pumpkin Seeds

Death Dusted Pumpkin Seeds

Awhile ago Oakridge BBQ offered up a limited time release of a special rub they make, called Habanero Death Dust. Now, any of you that know me know I like things with some heat to it, so I decided to give this stuff a try. I sent in my order and a few days later... package #20 of the limited run of 150 showed up on my door step.

Normally, even though I like heat, I steer away from anything "habanero" as it just means "heat" but not a lot of flavor. A little finger tip sample of this showed that it was different though. While it had some nice heat to it, there were also some nice subtle flavors that gave it an overall pleasing taste. Even my cat seemed to like it. Well at least until he made that funny face and ran around the room and ended up sitting in the corner licking his lips!

So I spent some time trying to decide what to try this out on, and being Halloween time, I figured why not try some Death Dusted Pumpkin Seeds? Now, the downside to this plan is the pumpkins. For whatever reason the guts of the pumpkins are my kryptonite. Just the smell of it makes me gag. Somehow I was able to talk my lovely wife into gutting the pumpkins for me. Thanks Honey! Otherwise this experiment probably never would have happened.

After she removed all the seeds from the two pumpkins we had, I gave them a good rinse and then spread them out on some paper towels to dry for about an hour or so. Then I placed them in a medium bowl, and added about a tablespoon of olive oil and gave them a good shake and stir to coat them in the oil. I added 2 teaspoons of Death Dust, one at a time, and gave things a good stir to mix it all up. They didn't quite get as evenly coated as I wanted to, but it all worked out in the end. The oven was fired up to 350 degrees, and I got out my trusty old baking sheet. Well actually I grabbed the new one since it's not as scratched up. I gave the sheet a good coat of butter, yes, real butter, to keep things from sticking and then spread the seeds out in a even layer.

Into the oven they went, and baked for about 25 minutes. At about the 15 minute mark I gave them a good stir and then back in the oven until they were done.

After cooking I let them cool for a little bit and then gave them a taste test. Hmmm. Not exactly what I expected. Most of the subtle flavors of the Death Dust were gone. Just tasted like plain roasted pumpkin seeds, and some nice heat on the back end. I was a little disappointed to tell you the truth. Maybe I didn't use enough Dust. But oh well, I like the taste of plain roasted seeds and these had some heat to them, so not all was lost. I put them in a zip-top bag and let them sit on the counter. The next day I grabbed another handful, and WOAH, what a difference! That great flavor was back and the pumpkin seeds were awesome! With a really nice heat kick at the end. I'm not sure what effect letting them sit overnight had, but they are definitely much better. Maybe when they were still warm the temperature was covering some of the flavors. Whatever it was, these are really good now. My only wish is I had a couple more pumpkins to make more seeds, as these won't last long!