Fired up the MAK Grill today to make some homemade Salsa and cold smoke some cheese at the same time!!
One of the awesome features of the MAK 2 Star General is the cold smoker box on the LHS, this allows for indirect smoke from the main cooking chamber to file in and allow you to totally indirectly, without heat, cold smoke Fish, Salmon, Cheeses and Nuts.
First up was the homemade smoked salsa, I cut up tomatoes, jalapeño, avocado, green chillies, red onions, garlic, red capsicum, green capsicum and yellow capsicum, placed them in the main chamber and set the MAK Grill to Smoke at 160F for 1 hour.
Once the ingredients for the Salsa had been smoked for 1 hour, I then left them at room temperature before I whacked them all into a food processor and blended them, once blended added some Chili, Chipotle, Jalapeño Salt and Chulola sauce for added flavour and spiceyness.
I have gotta say that the smoked ingredients for the Salsa tasted AMAZING and then with all the added spices, this is the best Salsa I have had outside of the USA!! Definitely doing this again and again and again !!
I then divided up some Margaret River Aged Cheddar and Costco American Aged Cheddar and placed on a frog mat and put them into the side cold smoker box and left them to cold smoke for 30 minutes.
Once the cheese was done, I left in the fridge for 1 hour and then vacuum sealed for later. As an experiment I rubbed one slice in sweet paprika and one in Amazing Spiced Apple Rub to see what type of complex flavour may develop over time.
Cheese took an amazing amount of smoke, perhaps too much as I had used Hickory Pellets, think next time I will use something a bit milder like Pecan or Cherry, overall the cheese took on and developed a very complex smoked flavour, whilst initially very overpowering with your first bite, after time it mellowed out and left you wanting more
PS: I have just abandoned the idea of cooking lamb tonight, so I can eat more Salsa ! Salsa, Salsa, Salsa, Salsa