I bought a pellet smoker and wanted to try it out. I was already going to sous vide a tri-tip so I checked out the Smoking Meats Forum. I found that several members cold smoke the meat before they put it in the sous vide oven.
I had the meat at 35° with a basic BBQ rub. I lit the smoker in the Weber grill and let them burn for about 10 minutes before putting the meat in. I let it smoke an hour before bagging the tri-tip and putting it in the sous-vide oven.
While the meat was in the SV, the smoker was still going (it only used about an inch and a half of one row of pellets) so I put a small block of Jack cheese in the Weber and smoked it an hour and 15 minutes. It was hot here yesterday (98°) so the cheese bled out some oil and got a little soft. I blotted the oil, wrapped the cheese in parchment paper, and stuck it back in the refrigerator.
Out of the bag the tri-tip was seared and came out smokey and perfect as usual thanks to the SV oven. (The messy cutting board was because of the juice left in the SV bag.) I forgot the check the meat temp when I took it out after smoking. I'd like to be able to cold smoke it longer next time so I'll put a probe in it.
Had some of the cheese this afternoon (before taking the pic
) and it was really good. The smoke was Oak, BTW.
Pat