BBQ Jalapeno Bacon Poppers

As you know, I have recently began a Freezer Clean-Out Challenge and am blogging my way through my freezer with recipes that I make with the food that I find.

Today, I found a gallon size, Ziploc bag filled with Jalapeno peppers from the fall in my chest freezer.  My very sweet husband had taken the time to prep these prior to freezing them so they would be ready to make Jalapeno poppers, so all I had to do was stuff and bake them.  How hard could that be, right?

During the past six weeks of sickness, I’ve been doing a lot of pinning on Pinterest. One of the recipes that I came across was for BBQ Jalapeno Poppers. They sounded really good so I added it to my recipe board. I originally found the recipe here. Today was so cold, that I thought it was a great day to warm up the kitchen with a new recipe.

Freezer Clean-Out Challenge Recipe: BBQ Jalapeno Bacon Poppers

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

55 mins

 

Fresh or frozen Jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese and cheddar cheese, wrapped in bacon and brushed with BBQ sauce.

Author: Parsnips and Parsimony

Serves: 9-12

Ingredients

• 18 fresh or frozen jalapeno peppers
• 18 fresh or frozen jalapeno peppers
• 1 – 8 oz. package cream cheese
• 1 – 8 oz. package cream cheese
• ½ C grated cheddar cheese
• ½ C grated cheddar cheese
• 1 green onion, sliced (optional)
• 1 green onion, sliced (optional)
• 18 slices thin bacon, cut into halves
• 18 slices thin bacon, cut into halves
• Bottled BBQ sauce

Instructions

1. Half and core jalapeno peppers being sure to wear gloves while handling the peppers and do not touch your eyes, mouth or nose! Set aside cut peppers.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese, cheddar cheese and green onions.
3. Carefully stuff the cheese mixture into each pepper.
4. Wrap one slice of bacon around each pepper. If you have very small peppers, you may need to cut the bacon into smaller pieces.
5. Place prepared poppers on a rimmed cookie sheet.
6. Brush the top of each popper with a thin coating of BBQ sauce.
7. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 25-35 minutes or until the bacon is cooked and crisp. Serve warm.

3.2.1310

A few changes I made to the recipe included not putting the green onion in the cheese mixture.  If it were the summer and the peppers were fresh, I would certainly add this but since it is winter time and I don’t have any green onions around, I just opted to leave them out.  The original recipe also called for fresh Jalapeno peppers.  It’s the dead of winter here in the northeast so all I had was frozen peppers. They were probably more soggy than fresh peppers, but the flavor was still outstanding, and quite honestly, I prefer a well cooked, soggy pepper when I make poppers.  One thing that I think could stand improvement is the fact that the bacon under the pepper never got crisp. Maybe it is due to the fact that all the bacon grease was sitting in the bottom of the peppers or because no air could get to the bottom. I really do not know.  But maybe next, I will put these on a baking rack inside of the cookie sheet, turn the heat down to 325 degrees and bake it on convection when the heat will evenly circulate around the peppers.

With all that said, yes, this recipe is definitely a MAKE AGAIN!  The cheese stuffing was outstanding and I appreciated how quickly these were to make.  Enjoy!