Jalapeno Poppers

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Greg Who Cooks

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I first became acquainted with this recipe when I heard of Pioneer Woman's Blog and decided to check out her cookbook... literally, at the library: Pioneer Woman Cooks: recipes form an accidental country girl by Rhee Drummond. This recipe from her cookbook piqued my interest so I promptly typed it into my cooking notes, and then forgot about it for several months...

Today I was at the market when I noticed these huge jalapeno peppers, the biggest I've ever seen. (Actually I had to pick out the smaller ones because the big ones were almost 4 inches long!) And I thought of Pioneer Woman and her jalapeno poppers recipe, so I decided to make them. :) But I forgot the recipe details. So WTH I just bought what I remembered and I decided to fake it.

As it turns out, the recipe I cooked is the exact recipe she posted on her blog: Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno Thingies. Or maybe she has two recipes, one for thingies and another for poppers, and almost the same recipe... If you're into existentialism you can ponder this...

In any case I'll tell you (1) how I cooked this tonight (what turned out to be the recipe she posted), and (2) I'll tell you how to improve it by using the recipe from her cookbook (which I'll tell-all, but in my own words). In any case they were delicious!!!

Ingredients:

bacon
cream cheese
jalapeno peppers

And don't forget the latex gloves to protect your hands from the caustic juices in the jalapenos!

poppers1.jpg


Method:

Cut the jalapeno peppers in half, then scoop out the insides. If you want hotter appetizers then leave a bit of the insides in, otherwise scoop the seeds and membranes all out. Fill the shells with cream cheese then wrap them with bacon (bacon!!!) and if necessary use a toothpick to hold them together.

poppers2.jpg


As it turned out my large peppers were just the right size for the center cut bacon I bought. When I was done stuffing them they looked like this:

poppers3.jpg


Next, put them on an aluminum foil lined pan (for easy clean up). Bake them about 20-25 minutes in 400-450 F oven (mine reaches only about 350 but it did well enough and I wasn't paying much attention to the time anyway...) Just bake them till they're done, and if you want you can broil them a few minutes to crisp the bacon. As it turned out I didn't need that.

poppers4.jpg


And they came out like this! Mmmmmmm!!! I didn't know these were so tasty! And so easy to make!!!

poppers5.jpg


So here's the rest of the recipe, from the book, the good recipe. This is in my own words so we won't have to worry about violating Rhee... er... I mean violating her copyright. (She's kind of cute!!!)

18 fresh jalapenos
one 8 oz package cream cheese
1/2 C. grated cheddar cheese
1 green onion, sliced
18 slices thin bacon, cut into halves
bottled barbecue sauce
toothpicks

You can pretty much figure it out from her ingredient list. For the stuffing you mix 1:2 cheddar cheese to cream cheese, and add in chopped green onions.

I remember when I read this recipe I thought the idea of using barbecue sauce just knocked me dead!!! I can't believe I forgot that but tonight when I was cooking I was hell bent on cooking and I didn't have any time to look at my notes from her book.

They were delicious anyway! I'm sure the barbecue sauce would be better--I can imagine the taste as I type this--maybe not so sure about the cheddar cheese (I'm not a big cheddar head although I'm a huge cheese lover, I usually eat cheese with both breakfast and with/before dinner). Toothpicks??? I think you can take 'em or leave 'em. Maybe you need 'em for small jalapenos.

So anyway I bought 4 peppers today and used only 2 of them tonight, so I'm guessing I'll have this again tomorrow night but with the barbecue sauce, and I've got green onions too, might as well try adding them also.

This recipe is so easy and so good!!! :yum:

poppers5.jpg
 
These sound great! I love that blog. She always has some good recipes and the blog is fun to read.
 
Thanks Greg Who Cooks! Fabulous pics. I first tried these last year when we visited Texas. They are just the best thing. We don't get hot peppers over here in France, so I brought some seeds back with me, but didn't have any luck with germination this last summer as it was a lousy start to summer. I will try again next year. I could move to the USA for the food alone - I just love the food there!
 
Hi Kimmo! I've never had jalapeno poppers before although as soon as I saw the recipe in PW's cookbook I could tell right off that they'd be great! Hot peppers, cheese and bacon. What's not to like about that! :) Never mind that they probably have a thousand calories each. Anyway as I type this I'm out of bacon and I think I'll lay off for a few weeks and maybe get a bit more exercise.

I'm surprised you can't get chilis to grow in FR. AFAIK the climate there is moderate. Chilis grow like crazy here in Los Angeles. Before I sold my house I had about 5-6 different varieties growing including Thai (bird) peppers, jalapeno, serrano, cayenne and bell peppers (although the bells didn't do very well). I purchased all my plants as seedlings at the home improvement store.

I suggest that you should check at home improvement and garden stores, or see if you can buy seedlings online.

The Jalapeno Poppers were so good last night and I had sufficient supplies to repeat again tonight so I will! In fact I've already done all the preparation work including a photo shoot and the poppers are resting in my refrigerator until the dinner hour approaches. I'm going to cook them and take a few final pictures (not in that order!) and probably post the new pictures later tonight. I think the new pics will come out even better because I've done a few things in an attempt at improvement.

I'm sure the recipe is going to be better too because I followed PW's cookbook recipe more closely and included chopped green onion in the cream cheese, and I've got my favorite barbecue sauce sitting on the counter hoping I won't forget it this time.

Except it's late morning now and I have to wait about 6 hours until dinner rolls around. I can hardly wait!
 
Very nice! I usually stuff whole jalapenos to make these and toss them in the smoker along side whatever I happen to be cooking. I like to leave some seeds and veins on some for those who love them hot.
 
Okay here's the replay on the jalapeno poppers. They were even better than the ones I cooked a few nights ago. I had even bigger jalapenos so I cut them in half this time, and used a half slice of center cut pork for each.

Unfortunately I got preoccupied with the photography shoot, and I still forgot the barbecue sauce. Never mind I just used some BBQ sauce as a dipping sauce, and they were very tasty. The big difference this time is that I remembered the chopped onions mixed in with the cream cheese.

I decided to discard the whole shoot except the last shot, shown here on of my new plates I bought earlier today:

jalapenopopperspart2.jpg


I disposed of the poppers by eating them. ;) I'll wait a few days and then get more jalapenos and bacon and do it again. In fact I'm going to keep doing this until I get it right! :)

I like the square plates. I got a pair (from Pier 1 Imports) and three more pairs from the nearby dollar store. I'm going to go back to P1I tomorrow and get another few of these plates to bulk out the set to service for 4, or maybe for 6. I don't know why but I've suddenly been struck by the idea that it would be fun to serve dinner on different plates every ngith.

I might expand one or two of the pairs I got from the dollar store too, to 4 plates in that design, probably just one of the variations. I'll be using the new plate in the near future posting here in the forum, changing the plates to get more variety in my food shots.

It would be fun to try some variations on this recipe. IMO almost any kind of cheese would work, with or without cream cheese. I have some goat cheese I think I'll try soon. I might break down and try the cheddar too. After smelling the nice smells of my kitchen today I realized that the jalapeno would go very well with cheddar.
 
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I don't know why jalapenos are so large this summer. For cooking, it's fine to just use fewer of them. We've had red ones too, must be a good growing season.

That's quiite a plateful you came up with. I usually am able to scarf only one, sometimes two at a backyard bbq party. Well, one must be polite.

Like the new plates. Like the way poppers are turning out.
 
If you want to grow those big jalapenos, buy the 'Mucho Nacho' variety. The peppers are very big, the yield is phenomenal, and they start bearing very early in the season and continue til frost.

Try leaving them whole, coring and seeding, and slip a Lil Smokie inside with the cream cheese. Wrap with bacon. That version is called an Atomic Buffalo Turd.
 
As you might imagine, there are literally thousands of ways to make poppers, which also go by the name of buffalo turds, possum drops, armadillo eggs and others.

Personally, I like 'em as sparrowgrass mentioned, left whole, seeded and stuffed and cooked on the grill. Once you've cut the top off and seeded them (LINK to a jalapeño seeding tool - VERY helpful!), you can stuff 'em with just about anything...diced shrimp, cooked ground beef or pork or taco meat, strips of cheese or onion or bits of garlic, Cream cheese mixtures - You name it!

After stuffing, wrap them in bacon and set them in a rack (LINK to a jalapeño grilling rack) and put them in your grill. It is generally best to cook them indirectly (not directly over the coals) so the bacon has a chance to cook and get a little crispy.

As for baking in the oven, well, GregWhoCooks has it right. 350° is good until the bacon is just about done, then finish 'em off in the broiler for some crispness. You can use the same rack for whole poppers in the oven, too.

Oh, and you can make poppers out of virtually any chile, even those little orange ones that look like cute little wrinkled up pumpkins!

- - ¡CAUTION! - - Poppers are extremely addictive. Oh, and those cute orange ones? The chile habanero runs from 100,000 to 350,000 on the Scoville scale (of spicy heat), whereas the chile jalapeño is a mere 2,500-8,000.

You folks have fun with these! Hear?

Wiley
 
I've made these poppers dozens of times since my OP, after inspiration from Pioneer Woman, thank you so much Ree! I have your new book "The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier" (by Ree Drummond, HarperCollins 2012). I intend to review this book at DC in the next week or so. From reading her last cookbook I'm sure there will be vast numbers of her recipes that I'll want to cook.

It kills me that I read her previous book several months before I first cooked them. I've developed a few variations of my own since my first poppers, and after serving them to my neighbors SWMBO (his not mine, I'm single) demanded them for our tomorrow's pot luck after-Thanksgiving neighborhood get together.

If you're addicted to poppers my personal advice is: (1) minimize the cream cheese, and (2) get lots of physical exercise! (I've actually lost weight since first cooking poppers, but I've also hugely increased my exercise regimen.) Get more work and you can reward yourself with more poppers!

(I've lost only 2 pounds so maybe it's statistical.)
 
those look good .. same way i make ABTs but i put a little smoky sausage in it also...
and i put franks hot wing sauce in the cream cheese ...
 
I still like the battered and deep fried version best! Along with a nice crema dipping sauce made with chipoltle, lime juice and honey.
 
Can I use frozen peppers? I have several rather large bags in the freezer from the garden...have bacon, cream cheese, lime, honey, chilpolte...
 
...Personally, I like 'em as sparrowgrass mentioned, left whole, seeded and stuffed and cooked on the grill. Once you've cut the top off and seeded them (LINK to a jalapeño seeding tool - VERY helpful!), you can stuff 'em with just about anything...diced shrimp, cooked ground beef or pork or taco meat, strips of cheese or onion or bits of garlic, Cream cheese mixtures - You name it!

After stuffing, wrap them in bacon and set them in a rack (LINK to a jalapeño grilling rack) and put them in your grill...


I make them using whole peppers too. My problem is, if you get peppers big enough so the seeding tool doesn't cut through the pepper, they're too big to fit into the holes in the grilling rack.

Regardless, they are truly dangerous in their addictive qualities.
 
Can I use frozen peppers? I have several rather large bags in the freezer from the garden...have bacon, cream cheese, lime, honey, chilpolte...

Peppers get rather soft and loose after freeing. This is generally not a problem if you're going to chop them up, but in the poppers recipe I think you'll discover the skins are too soft.
 
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