Hot Honey Smoked Cream Cheese Topped With Crispy Bacon

By James Kimble October 18, 2023 4 mins read 207 Views

Looking for an easy appetizer that can be done and dusted in an hour with minimal ingredients? May I suggest smoked cream cheese? If you’ve never had it before, it’s so good and so easy.

This smoked cream cheese with hot honey and crispy bacon is warm, smoky, and has a great texture that makes the best dip ever.

Smoked Cream Cheese with Hot Honey and Crispy Bacon

The combination of warm, smoke infused cream cheese on crackers is a winner. Then you add crispy bacon and a generous drizzle of hot honey to the equation. It’s not something you can pass up easily. Sweet, spicy, and savory all in one bite!

I usually throw this on my smoker near the end of a cook. For this recipe, I decided to use my Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven. It has a handy smoke option and is far more efficient on wood pellets than firing up my main smoker for such a small dish.

Ingredients you’ll need

Cream cheese
Smoke Kitchen’s Honey Garlic Rub
Bacon
Hot honey

Equipment you’ll need

Smoker or outdoor oven – I used the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor oven.
Pellets – I used the gourmet pellets that were included.

wood pellets in side of Ninja woodfire oven

How to Make Smoked Cream Cheese with Hot Honey and Crispy Bacon

1. Prep

Starting with a cold block of cream cheese, open up the foil packaging. I keep the cream cheese on top of the same packaging to make things easier to handle. Plus, it saves on cleaning up later.

Score the top of the cream cheese in a cross-hatch pattern. This gives the cream cheese some extra space for the seasoning to go into, and it makes for a great presentation.

2. Season

Season with Honey Garlic rub on the top and sides.

unsmoked seasoned cream cheese block on foil

No need to season the very bottom. You don’t want to handle cream cheese too much and mush it all around.

3. Fire up the oven

Heat your oven/smoker to 250°F.

Place the cream cheese on top of the foil into your oven and smoke at 250°F for an hour.

This is plenty of time to warm the cream cheese and infuse some smoke flavor into it. You don’t want to go too heavy on the smoke, or it will overpower the cream cheese.

4. The topping

Dice up some bacon and fry it until it’s crispy.

Remove from the pan and place on some paper towels to absorb the grease.

5. Assemble

Once the cream cheese is done smoking, top with crispy bacon and drizzle on some hot honey.

Serve with crackers, and enjoy!

smoked cream cheese plated with crackers

Variations

Switch up your toppings: A spicy pepper jelly or bacon jam would go great on top.
Dip some veggies: Try dipping carrots or celery instead of crackers.
Add it to another dip: Consider smoking cream cheese and then adding it to another dip recipe to give you a smoky flavor.

We have a smoked cream cheese recipe with four different toppings you can choose from if you want more ideas.

Looking for another dip recipe, try these favorites