A couple of weeks ago I read an article on the Atlantic's food blog that recommended making a grilled skewer appetizer with smoked cheese cubes wrapped in pancetta. The story reminded me of a delicious tapa I had years ago in a Spanish dive bar. Anxious to re-create the dish, I headed to the store and purchased thinly sliced pancetta and smoked mozzarella. There's really no recipe, you simply wrap a 1/2-inch cube of cheese with pancetta, skewer, and place on the grill. This is where I ran into trouble. The cheese melted before the pancetta could fully cook, sticking to the grill. I transferred the skewers to a frying pan to try and salvage them, but the cheese continued to melt, clumping together. While the final bite tasted wonderful, the technique needs some fine tuning.
Do you have any advice for getting the pancetta to cook before the cheese melts? Have you ever made cheese skewers?






Sportmax
Fat Face
Levi's
freeze the cheese before wrapping it in the pancetta....should help
1What about partially cooking the pancetta before grilling? Either pan fry baking comes to mind.
2yeah definitely have the pancetta almost fully cooked before wrapping it around the cheese. freezing may work if you only need a LITTLE longer before the cheese melts.
3I'd opt for cooking the pancetta until almost done as well. And how forking delish do these sound!?!
4I've done something similar to this and if you stick the cheese in the freezer before you grill it, it doesn't melt quite as quickly and the pancetta should cook through.
5do you have to use the smoked mozzarella - you might want to give kefalotyri or kasseri cheese a try which is a greek cheese and I think I would do both - freeze the cheese and par cook the pancetta
6I found an unbelievable smoked blue cheese (yes, smoked!) that would be fantastic in this recipe. It's fairly mild, with smokey and caramel-y notes. Here is a link:
http://www.roguecreamery.com
7Definitely freeze the cheese!
8Both, freeze the cheese and pre-cook the pancetta.
9Freeze the cheese and broil on a foil lined pan, or go with the individually cooked by blowtorch method.
10Exactly what I was about to say! Blowtorch them.
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