# Jalapeno Poppers



## Greg Who Cooks (Oct 13, 2012)

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!







*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.






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:






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.






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






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!!!


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## Snip 13 (Oct 13, 2012)

Yum! I love Jalapeno's, missing Barcelona just looking at these pic's. I will have to make these


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## Barbara L (Oct 13, 2012)

I definitely have to try this recipe. I could make a meal of just these!


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## chopper (Oct 13, 2012)

These sound great!  I love that blog. She always has some good recipes and the blog is fun to read.


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## kimmo (Oct 13, 2012)

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!


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## Greg Who Cooks (Oct 13, 2012)

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!


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## Andy M. (Oct 13, 2012)

Greg Who Cooks said:


> ...Except it's late morning now and I have to wait about 6 hours until dinner rolls around. I can hardly wait!




There's always lunch.


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## roadfix (Oct 13, 2012)

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.


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## Greg Who Cooks (Oct 14, 2012)

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:






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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## Whiskadoodle (Oct 14, 2012)

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.


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## Kylie1969 (Oct 15, 2012)

They look so tasty Greg!


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## sparrowgrass (Oct 15, 2012)

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.


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## WileyP (Nov 24, 2012)

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


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## Greg Who Cooks (Nov 24, 2012)

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.)


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## love2"Q" (Nov 25, 2012)

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 ...


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## CraigC (Nov 25, 2012)

I still like the battered and deep fried version best! Along with a nice crema dipping sauce made with chipoltle, lime juice and honey.


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## CWS4322 (Nov 25, 2012)

Can I use frozen peppers? I have several rather large bags in the freezer from the garden...have bacon, cream cheese, lime, honey, chilpolte...


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## Andy M. (Nov 25, 2012)

WileyP said:


> ...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.


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## Greg Who Cooks (Nov 29, 2012)

CraigC said:


> I still like the battered and deep fried version best! Along with a nice crema dipping sauce made with chipoltle, lime juice and honey.



That sounds good! Do you care to post a recipe for the batter?


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## Greg Who Cooks (Nov 29, 2012)

CWS4322 said:


> 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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## Greg Who Cooks (Nov 29, 2012)

It would be interesting to make the poppers and cook them, let them cool and freeze them. Then some time later defrost them and reheat them then serve.

I'm not quite sure what the exact process would be, there's plenty of people here on the forum who know about cook-freeze-reheat than me, perhaps you have some ideas on how to do this.

I think perhaps assemble them, partially cook them, let them cool then freeze them. Later I don't know if you'd thaw them first or maybe directly into the oven to complete the cooking cycle before serving them. Do you have any ideas?

The goal would be perhaps you're having a party and you want to do the labor in advance so that on the day of the party you won't have to focus on making the poppers and can concentrate on the other food you're going to serve at your party.

One thing I know for sure though, fresh chilis get kind of rubbery after freezing even if only a day or two. I've been using that process with Thai chilis for the last few months. the problem is those little chilis don't last that long sitting on your counter or in your refrigerator. I was wondering how they would do being frozen until I need them. What I discovered is that they come out of the freeze and thaw process rubbery and limp, not crisp like they are when fresh. With my Thai cooking however, at least most recipes, this doesn't make much difference because I'm going to finely chop them and put them in a dish I'm cooking so their texture isn't very important. The sole exception I can think of is Thai squid salad where I like very thinly sliced Thai peppers. When they're sliced and eaten raw they need to be crisp. Only fresh chilis would work.

Getting back to the jalapeno poppers, by the time you cook them they've lost much of the crispness they have when fresh. I don't know what they'd do if you partially cooked the poppers and then went through the freeze then reheat and serve cycle. Maybe the partially peppers might work or maybe not.

So of anybody has any ideas let's hear it.


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## Greg Who Cooks (Nov 29, 2012)

BTW I've thought up a variation and tried them on my neighbors and evidently my variation was liked because we got together for a late turkey dinner (a few days after Thanksgiving) and the wife specifically requested this version.

I got to thinking the poppers in some ways sort of resembled rumaki, so I put a slice of water chestnut in some of them, and the crunch from the WC was kind of nice.

Another variation I want to try, skip the slice peppers in half and instead just core them out maybe with a vegetable peeler or a very thin knife, fill them with cream cheese, then slice them into cylinders and wrap with bacon, cook in the usual manner.

For me this recipe has been slowly evolving. One mistake I was making at the beginning was dipping them in barbecue sauce. That's over kill and the sauce burns (the suger in the bbq sauce really over-caramelizes) and they burn and stick to the cookie sheet. The best way I've found to do that step so far is to assemble them all then put a dab of bbq sauce on the top of each before baking.


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## SweetTeboho (Nov 29, 2012)

I recently made some poppers, but my own style.  I cored a few jalapenos and put a touch  of cream cheese on the inside.  Then I took a mixture I made from sauteing onion, chopped turkey bacon, garlic and mexican spices to fill.  And then finished the it off with a mexican cheese blend (the kraft package that says it was made with cream cheese).  My grill was not available, so I stuck them in the oven until crisp.  

My husband and I eat poppers/stuffed jalapenos wherever we go and he said they were the best he's had.  (of course he could be required to say that!)


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## CraigC (Nov 30, 2012)

Greg Who Cooks said:


> That sounds good! Do you care to post a recipe for the batter?


 
I like to use a tempura batter. Keeps it nice and lite.


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## GotGarlic (Nov 30, 2012)

Greg Who Cooks said:


> 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.



I've made a version of poppers where the peppers are cooked before putting on the grill, so the skins can be removed first; of course, this softens them. So I think freezing and then  thawing and filling would work fine.


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## Chef Kat (Nov 30, 2012)

Poppers are a staple where I'm from -- those look great!  I don't usually use bacon (we don't eat meat at our house) but when I'm making them for other people, I would most certainly use it!  I'm thinking about the Christmas Eve appetizer party that we'll be having at our house this year ... oh, yeah.  The family would love me forever!


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## Greg Who Cooks (Nov 30, 2012)

CraigC said:


> I like to use a tempura batter. Keeps it nice and lite.



So you fill the jalapenos with cream cheese, wrap in bacon, then tempura batter them and fry, then make a sauce with crema, chipotle, lime juice and honey.

I just wanted to make sure I got that right. You know me--well I'm like most folks here--I'm always interested in a new recipe and new variations of recipes.

I have a cooking thing I do that I call transliteration. A simple example would be to take a chicken stir fry dish and turn it into a grilling recipe with the same sauce on the outside of the chicken pieces. Or I'll go the other direction and turn a whole piece recipe into a stir fry. It gets more complicated, taking a sauce from one recipe and the entree from a different recipe. I like to analyze recipes and identify modules, then swap the modules around with other recipes.

The jalapeno poppers have potential in being transliterated from an appetizer into an entree by the addition of some protein--beef, chicken, shrimp. Maybe the popper becomes the outside of the entree. Maybe it becomes the sauce. Maybe you make chicken Kiev and the popper becomes the stuffing.


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## CraigC (Dec 1, 2012)

Greg Who Cooks said:


> So you fill the jalapenos with cream cheese, wrap in bacon, then tempura batter them and fry, then make a sauce with crema, chipotle, lime juice and honey.
> 
> I just wanted to make sure I got that right. You know me--well I'm like most folks here--I'm always interested in a new recipe and new variations of recipes.


 
No bacon and no cream cheese. Stuffing is homemade Mexican style chorizo and a Mexican melting cheese normally. Stuffing could be whatever I'm in the mood for.

Although I love bacon, I'm not a fan of wrapping stuff in it. For example, I like my shrimp to taste like shrimp, not like bacon. I read how people wrap meatloaf and smoke it. Makes me wonder if it is done to hide the flavor of the meatloaf!


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## Whiskadoodle (Dec 1, 2012)

O ye who lives in the land of milk and honey.  Today I saw red colored jalapenos $5.99 / lb and green ones were 2.99/ lb.  This was at a big box grocery.  Now they are out of season.  I usually buy them at a Mexican market,  much more reasonable prices.


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## Greg Who Cooks (Dec 2, 2012)

CraigC said:


> Although I love bacon, I'm not a fan of wrapping stuff in it. For example, I like my shrimp to taste like shrimp, not like bacon. I read how people wrap meatloaf and smoke it. Makes me wonder if it is done to hide the flavor of the meatloaf!



Yeah, but... poppers are supposed to taste like bacon and cheese and jalapeno because that's what they are!! 

But there is no recipe around that isn't a stepping off point for diversions and dispersions... Every recipe got its beginnings in some other recipe combined with a creative chef.


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## Greg Who Cooks (Dec 2, 2012)

Whiskadoodle said:


> O ye who lives in the land of milk and honey.  Today I saw red colored jalapenos $5.99 / lb and green ones were 2.99/ lb.  This was at a big box grocery.  Now they are out of season.  I usually buy them at a Mexican market,  much more reasonable prices.


 
Holy ... cow! I've been seeing the greens for pounds a dollar.

I'd give a few extra bucks for a good supply of Hatch peppers...


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