Smoked Cream Cheese with Habanero Honey
Tailgating season is here which calls for flavorful appetizers! No need for store bought when this Smoked Cream Cheese takes only 5 minutes of prep time. You'll love the combination of a smoky dry rub a flavorful El Yucateco Habanero Hot Sauce and Honey Glaze drizzled on top. The only question to answer is what will you dip in this delightful spread? This post is sponsored by our friends at El Yucateco, all opinions are my own.
Smoked Cream Cheese with Habanero Honey
A couple years ago we decided to invest in a smoker as our collective Christmas present to ourselves. We use our grill multiple times per week but had been dreaming of a smoker to take things up a notch.
We've loved getting to experiment with smoked chicken wings, smoked pizza and smoked chicken breast for dinner.
A pellet smoker isn't just great for dinner though, it's also great for creating show stopping appetizers, which is exactly where our recipe for smoked cream cheese comes in.
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And we're not just talking about any smoked cream cheese, but one with flavorful habanero honey drizzled over top. This drizzle features Kutbil-Ik XXXtra Hot Habanero Sauce from El Yucateco. The recipe for this hot sauce comes from Mayan culinary traditions and is derived from a Mayan word meaning "crushed chili".
It's packed with flavor and a hint of heat, making it perfect for sharing with neighbors, friends or family while huddled around to cheer on your favorite team.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Quick and easy recipes are always a hit but this recipe has a few things you're especially going to love!
- The ease of this recipe cannot be overstated! It only requires 5 minutes of prep work and the smoker does the rest of the magic.
- The flavor! This recipe is smoky and creamy with the perfect balance of sweet and heat.
- This is one of those easy to multiply recipes. Throw an extra block or two of cream cheese onto the smoker if you need to feed a whole crowd!
Ingredients/Substitutions
Like a lot of simple appetizers, this one requires just a few ingredients! Here's what you'll need to make it:
- Cream cheese: the base for this recipe is, of course, cream cheese. You'll want to use full fat for this recipe.
- Dry rub: we modified our BBQ Chicken Dry Rub (skipping the brown sugar) for this recipe. Feel free to use whatever dry rub you have and love. The one we use used chipotle powder which adds an extra hint of smoke flavor.
- Honey: use the honey you've got in your pantry already.
- Habanero Sauce: we featured Kutbil-Ik XXXtra Hot Habanero Sauce by El Yucateco in this recipe, but you could try a different El Yucateco hot sauce if you have another flavor you prefer.
About El Yucateco
Living in New Mexico for years and being in Arizona now, we love adding flavor and spice to our recipes.
El Yucateco is the #1 habanero brand in the United States and has 13 total flavors of hot sauce. The habanero sauce we used is 10000-12500 on the Scoville range (jalapeños are 1500-1900 for reference) but we only use a little in this recipe so it's more about the habanero flavor than spice!
You can easily add more if you like more spice! This level of spice was perfect for our whole family to enjoy. But feel free to add extra El Yucateco Hot Sauce for extra flavor!
Instructions
If you're ready to try this recipe, here's how to make it!
Scroll down to the recipe card for the full step by step instructions! ⬇️
- Start by preheating your pellet grill to 175ºF. It's important that your smoker remain between 165-180ºF for this recipe so the cream cheese doesn't melt.
- Generously coat your cream cheese in the dry rub. You can lightly pat it into the cream cheese.
- Once your smoker is preheated, move your cream cheese block either to a piece of parchment paper or an oven safe dish.
Please note: once cooked it's difficult to move the block of cream cheese without messing up the pretty crosshatch lines. Plan accordingly by cooking it in your serving dish or on parchment paper to move it easily.
- Cook the cream cheese on the smoker for 1 hour and 30 minutes, checking halfway through the cook time. The cream cheese will open up at the score lines slightly and be warm in the middle when it's finished cooking.
- When the cook time is almost up, prepare your habanero honey by adding the honey and hot sauce to a small pan and heating on low until incorporated.
- Remove the cream cheese from the grill and pour the honey over the cream cheese. Drizzle olive oil and sprinkle flaky sea salt over the cream cheese.
- Serve with toasted bread slices, crackers, or your favorite veggies as dippers.
Serving Size: One 8-ounce block of cream cheese can serve 8-10 people as an appetizer. For larger groups, you might consider preparing multiple blocks with different dry rubs or El Yucateco Hot Sauce flavors.
More Appetizers to Try
If you love this simple cream cheese dip, you'll also love Cream Cheese with Pepper Jelly or Whipped Feta Dip.
Make it a party by serving pepperoni pinwheels or honey sriracha meatballs with sangria or a Corona Sunrise.
Smoked Cream Cheese with Habanero Honey
Ingredients
- 8 ounces full fat cream cheese
Dry Rub
- ¾ teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 pinch chipotle powder
Habanero Honey
- ½ cup honey
- 1 tablespoon hot sauce El Yucateco Kutbil-Ik XXXtra Hot Habanero Sauce, plus extra for drizzling
- 1 teaspoon olive oil drizzled over finished dish
- 1 pinch flaky sea salt optional
Instructions
Prepare the Smoker and Cream Cheese
- Preheat pellet smoker to 175ºF and fill your hopper with pellets if needed.
- While preheating, prepare the cream cheese block by generously pouring the dry rub onto all sides and edges. Lightly rub the spices into the cream cheese block.
- Then with a sharp knife, score the cream cheese block in a cross hatch pattern with alternating diagonal lines across the cream cheese.
- Move your cream cheese onto a piece of parchment paper or into an oven-safe dish that you plan to serve the cream cheese in. It's not easy to move and maintain the shape later!
- Once preheated, add your cream cheese to the smoker and let cook for 1 hour and 30 minutes. You can check on it about halfway through just to make sure your temperature is holding properly and the cream cheese isn't cooking too quickly.
Make the Habanero Honey
- When there are about 5 minutes left on the cream cheese, mix together the honey and El Yucateco hot sauce in a small pot over low heat. Stir to combine and remove from heat.
Assemble and Serve
- Remove the baking dish with the cream cheese from the smoker and pour hot honey over it. You don't have to pour all of the hot sauce mixture if you want it to be more cream cheese forward.
- Top with additional drops of hot sauce, drizzle with olive oil and top with flaky sea salt, if desired.
- Add your favorite dippers like toasted bread slices, crackers, peppers, or carrots and serve immediately.
Nutrition
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