Easy Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno Poppers

Hello! I’m Sean’s wife and new to the blog! You’ll see a little different perspective from me as I am definitely not the chef in the house! If you’ve ever read a recipe that says “bake the chicken” and thought to yourself, “If I knew how to bake the chicken, I wouldn’t be reading the cookbook,” you understand me! But, I’m married to a BBQ master, and love to eat, drink, and travel, so here I am.

Back to the jalapeno poppers. They are a really simple way to venture into grilling. This is more of a how-to than just step-by-step recipe. It might also help some of you experienced cooks and grillmasters to coach those of us new folks.

Ingredients:

• 10 Jalapenos
• 1 pkg Oscar Mayer Pre-cooked Thick Bacon
• 1 8oz package Cream Cheese – softened
• Shredded Cheese – I used a Mexican blend we had in the house
• Sour Cream
• Your favorite BBQ rub or spice (we like Dizzy Pig’s Dizzy Dust)
• Toothpicks

Steps:

First, get the grill going. We used the Big Green Egg, which was heated to 375 degrees cooked over lump charcoal. I’m not certified to use the Big Green Egg by myself, so had some assistance here, but you could do just as easily on a gas grill. The Egg takes a while to warm up, so you’ll have plenty of time to prepare the poppers.

I made my first rookie mistake while cleaning the jalapenos. In my mind, we were grilling the jalapenos whole, so I cut the tops off and very carefully cleaned out the veins and seeds without cutting the exterior. Then I realized as I was looking back at pictures that they are typically cut length-wise, and now the ends were cut off, so there was nothing to hold in the filling. It didn’t turn out to be a huge issue, but I suggest leaving the tops on unless you have a Jalapeno Popper Tray to grill them vertically.

For the filling, I put the cream cheese in a bowl and added approximately 1/4 cup of shredded cheese and about 2 tablespoons of sour cream to help soften the texture. Then I used a spoon to combine the ingredients. I elected to leave the filling firm. We decided to do a taste test and added some Dizzy Pig Dust to half of the filling.

Next, I filled the peppers and wrapped them in bacon, securing the bacon with toothpicks. I used Oscar Meyer pre-cooked bacon. It’s malleable and easy to wrap with, but fully cooked so it will crisp up on the grill. The poppers don’t take long to grill, and uncooked bacon won’t crisp up.

Finally, we put the peppers right on a grate for about ten minutes on the outside of the fire to cook them indirect.

Lessons Learned:

Obviously one lesson was to leave on the tops of the peppers or use a tray to keep them vertical. Second, either I cleaned the peppers too well, or they were the mildest jalapenos ever. The cream cheese will counteract the heat, so suggest leaving in some veins to increase the spice level. Also, the poppers with the Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust definitely had better flavor. You can use a liberal amount of your favorite rub to add flavor.

Overall, these were a delicious and easy foray into grilling for this unexperienced cook!