Hey y'all,
What a crazy week around the House of Payne. I bet y'all thought I was cookin' up a storm in my little 'o kitchen didn't ya! I wish that was what I was up to, instead I was suffering from the worst ever sinus headaches known to mankind. I kid you not! They were so terrible I couldn't even lift my head for the better part of the days. Thankfully, by the time the weekend rolled around I was feeling a little better. Erik, my son surprised me Friday night, I did not see this coming.... Hey Mom, I've invited friends over for the fights! What? You're kidding, was my only response. He did promise to almost do all the work if I could just do the shopping and make poppers.
Lucky for me, Dennis felt sorry for me and came along as my shopping companion. You know what girls? That's not always a bad thing. They like to throw yummy stuff in that cart your pushing around and sometimes, that's a good thing. And this was one of those times!
One of the guys favorite Barbecue requests are for my Jalapeno Poppers. They love them so much. I usually make around a 100 of them and I'm pretty sure that by the end of the night they are always gone! If you haven't tried them you better run out and grab you some of those green peppers. You might want to plant some in your garden like we have this year. They will come in handy for those last minute Barbecues.
Well, lets get you started. Here's all the ingredients you will need to make these mouth watering poppers!
The first thing you want to do is take out your cream cheese and let it come to room temperature. Take your peppers and rinse them off real good. Air dry them on a paper towel and take your package of bacon and cut it in half.
Once you get your peppers dried off, take a knife and cut them right down the middle. You can leave the stem on or off, it really doesn't matter much.
Now for the fun part and let me give you a BIG WARNING right now, listen up real good now. Do not and I repeat do not touch any part of your body while working with the jalapenos. Especially your eyes. Trust, I made that mistake a long time ago and I have never forgotten what it felt. Now you can use plastic gloves too. I have done this many of times.
Here's my technique for removing the vein and seeds. I simply take a teaspoon and a bowl. I turn my spoon over and drag it from the top of the pepper towards the bottom. Dump the vein and seeds in to the bowl. Make sure you try to get all of that out, this is so that your peppers won't be to spicy to eat. Especially the young ones.
After you have let your cream cheese set out at room temperature for at least 2 hours you can get the heart of the poppers by filling them with all that creamy goodness! Trust me, its so delicious. I use the same type of teaspoon to fill the centers of the jalapenos. Just press it in and smooth is out with the edge of the spoon. This is probably the longest step in preparing your poppers. But it's so worth all the work. Your family will thank you later!
Now for the last part, take your half cut piece of bacon and wrap it around the pepper, starting in the middle. After you have it wrapped up, take a round tookpick and slide it across the middle grabbing the end. That's all there is to it. Place it on a cookie sheet with a rack. This way all the drippings for the bacon land in the bottom of the pan and not all over your fingers! For easy clean up line the bottom of your pain with tinfoil. You can at this point brush them with barbecue sauce but to be honest my guys like them the original way. Don't forget to give you hands a deep scrub to wash off all that pepper hotness.
Bake these beauties in a 375 oven for 45 minutes. The bacon should be crispy and the cream cheese toasty brown.
