Jalapeño Poppers

Cookouts will be starting this month in the Northeast if they haven’t started already. And what better appetizer to snack on while grilling dogs and burgers than Jalapeño Poppers. They’re easy to prepare, and holy moly, they taste great. Sometimes these are a whole meal for me.

While these poppers can pack a spicy hot punch, you can tame them down a bit just by cooking them longer.

The recipe below is my Popper favorite, made with ground hot (spicey) Italian sausage. While the base is cream cheese, feel free to substitute the sausage with other ingredients alone or combined: bacon bits, chopped shrimp, vegetables, cheddar cheese, taco spices, or whatever you want. Easy peasy.

There are two ways to prepare the poppers. I prefer the whole pepper popper method of using a Jalapeño Grill Rack. Place the rack on a pizza or cookie sheet lined with tin foil. This will help keep your oven clean.

The other way to cook the poppers is to cut the jalapeños in half top to bottom and cook prepared poppers on a cookie sheet.

Another useful tool for coring the whole jalapeños is the Jalapeño Pepper Corer and De-seeder. The person who invented this should be given a Nobel Prize.

Calorie Content: Poppers are loaded with cream cheese. Of course there will be calories, although I heard from trusted sources that as long as you are grilling, the calories won’t count. It’s like they disappear. Plus, the jalapeño pepper part of these does count toward your daily fruit/vegetable serving. For those techno-nerds out there, a jalapeño pepper is technically a fruit, not a vegetable.

Ingredients:

Musical ingredient: Camila: Dejarte De Amar cd

18 Jalapeños (use the straight ones with a top diameter of about 1 ¼ inches)

4 oz cream cheese (see note below)

½ cup (or more) ground hot Italian sausage

3 T chopped fresh cilantro

Recommended drink: Modelo Especial beer

Directions:

1.     Preheat oven to 375 F.

2.     In a frying pan, brown sausage. Drain grease then pat sausage with paper towels to remove more of the grease. Place browned sausage in a medium mixing bowl.

3.     Add the cream cheese and cilantro to the sausage and blend using a fork.

4.     Cut stem end of jalapeños and remove membrane and seeds.

5.     Stuff jalapeños with the sausage/cilantro/cream cheese mixture, then place vertically in rack.

6.     Cook in oven for 25 to 30 minutes. If cooking on the grill, use a covered grill and cook poppers by indirect heat.

Notes:

Cream Cheese

Cream cheese comes in a few options. Use the “brick” cream cheese, usually wrapped in foil and housed in a small carboard box. The most common one in these parts is the Philadelphia brand. “Brick” cream cheese is typically used for baking. This is the choice style for Poppers.

 Other types of cream cheese are very soft and come in plastic “tubs.” These are designed to be easily spreadable cheeses and are not ideal cheeses to use as a base in poppers.