(Photo: TPC's Grilled Jalapeño Poppers with grilled Hot Wings)
Not a Super Bowl goes by in my world without Poppers. I'm not talking about those crappy, breaded things stuffed with cream cheese, I'm talking about a fresh jalapeno filled with jack cheese, shrimp and bacon, then grilled. I learned this version from my buddy Jerry, who somehow wrangled Super Bowl tickets yesterday, but I only hated him until I ate my first Popper! We've tried a million variations, sausage, pepper jack, colby, crab, etc., but we keep coming back to these ingredients.
They're really labor-intensive, but once you've served them to guests, they'll be more than happy to help you prep them next time.
The Pragmatic Chef's™ Grilled Jalapeño Poppers
For each Popper, you'll need:
1 large fresh Jalapeño Take your time while choosing your peppers. Select large, uniformly sized jalapenos with no soft spots.
1 chunk of Monterey Jack cheese
1 large shrimp, peeled and deveined (31-40 count) Uncooked is best, but you can use cooked shrimp if you have to.
1/2 strip of bacon, parcooked- Cut your strips in half, and microwave about 2-3 minutes.
1 toothpick- Use a plain toothpick, not the colored party ones I used for the picture, and take them out of the package so that you're not putting your hands into the box once they've been handling food.
Okay, let's assemble some poppers. It's best to have everything prepped before you start. Take a jalapeno and make sure it's sitting on the flattest side, so that it doesn't flop over on the grill. Leave the stem on, but if it's helping the pepper to stand up, trim it because the stems will be of no help once they've been cooked. I'm using a tourneé knife here, but it's overkill. Any small paring knife is fine. Normally I would say to never work with a dull knife, but you'll be holding these a lot while you're hollowing them until you get the hang of it, and you don't want to jab a sharp knife into your palm!
Make a horizontal cut starting just above the tip of the pepper, and continue until you get to the seeds. Stop. Carefully make a vertical cut from the top to where it meets the first cut you made. Don't keep going, because as the pepper softens, it'll rip right there. Save the top scrap for something else, or snack on those with some cheese as you continue.
Now that the top's off, use your knife to carefully cut the rest of the core without poking through the side, then run your knife down the length on each side to free the core and seeds. It should pop out in one piece.
Use the back of your knife, a small spoon, or even a grapefruit spoon to remove the rest of the veins. You can leave them if you want, but there's quite a bit of heat there. Your jalapeno will ready to stuff when it looks like this:
Cut a slice of Jack cheese as deep as the pepper. If you've done a good job selecting your peppers, you can pre-slice your cheese, otherwise you'll have to custom cut each one. I cut a slice, then slice it in half as shown:
Take a shrimp, and place it as shown, with the tail of the shrimp at the tip of the pepper:
Almost done! Take your precooked half piece of bacon, lay the thinnest part at the stem end, fold it in half at the tip, so you'll end up with the widest part of the bacon on top, at the widest part of the pepper. (The one in the picture is done the opposite way because of how the piece of bacon is shaped.) Take a toothpick and push it all the way through, making sure that you go through the meaty part of the bacon and through the shrimp so it all stays together. Do a good job with this because they'll be top heavy. Here's one ready for the grill:
Grill these on a nice low heat until the bacon is crisp, the shrimp is cooked, the cheese is bubbling and the pepper is really, really brown. Use a fork to move them around, tongs will squeeze the good stuff out. The longer you cook the jalapeños, the mellower and sweeter they get. Make sure they're really soft and completely cooked.
They can even be cooked more than in the final picture, but the bottoms were dark brown but the sides weren't because I had wings on the grill at the same time, so the peppers were off of direct heat most of the time.
oooO hey, that's nice. I should have done that yesterday!
Maybe tonight. I have some really fancy cheeses from the farmer's market, oh yeah.
Biggles
Oh, dang those look good... how to make them in the oven?...
Biggles--
Give them a shot, it's Hillbilly Caviar at its finest!
Pie Shell--
You could totally bake them in the oven, but you might want to put them on a rack on a baking sheet, so that the bottoms don't get mushy. Just keep an eye on them so that the bacon doesn't burn.
I'm all over this tonight! Dr. Atkin's said it was okay! Yum, I can taste them already!!!!!!
Let me know how they turn out, Shell. Just a warning, they're insanely addicitive!
These look delish! I'm going to go eat some bacon now.
I had a feeling you'd be making those yesterday. I got a wild craving for them around half-time too. Think I'll make a batch up soon...
I demand that you make some of these and send them to me.
Ha, Julie. I'll bet sales would pick up if I threw in a half dozen poppers with every order.
Scott - they were awesome... I over cooked them a little, but it didn't keep me from eating them! Next time I'll need to lower the rack a little. I made G-unit cherry-tomato-grilled-tofu kababs (with SS of course), lol... figured the poppers would be too hot for her (I like HEAT, left much of the vein and seeds).
These were addictive - you were right but I showed restraint and saved 4 to eat with lunch.
I might try them sometime with poblano chilles 2 shrimp each and more bacon... as an entree.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
(PS: They didn't make it till lunch - I followed up my breakfast burrito with them. heeee).
I really like the poblano idea, Shell. I've done minis out of serranos with fontina cheese and pancetta, too.
Peppers are a wonderful gift from the Gods... now let's see what you can do with a Scotch bonnet!
LOL
*ouch!*
About the only thing I'd do with a scotch bonnet is run from it!
Actually, they have wonderful flavor. I like to float a few on top of a pot of chili, poking just a few holes in each one with a paring knife as way to regulate the heat. Good stuff.
I'll send you a tasty little recipe to try... it's hot, oh yes... but delicious - a "relish"... or is it "chutney"? Heck I don't know, it's hot!
Why, these look good enough to eat! Having tasted these before I can only say that these poppers would have been the only thing that could have helped on Super Bowl Sunday!
I made these this last weekend. They were a big hit a my house and the party I took them too. The best thing about them was a complete absence of the "next day lava from hell" syndrom that my normal chain eating mexican pickle habit causes.
Cool, Sluggo. You can cook quite a bit of heat out of them, but occasionally you'll get a hot one no matter what. Thanks for giving them a try!
Trying these tonight. Thanks for posting this!
As I said in the above post I tried these over the weekend and just wanted to pass along my experience in case anyone tries these.
First off, these are GREAT! It does take a bit of time to assemble the, but after 15-20, you get the hang of it ;) I did make some rookie mistakes I'd like to pass along and also some tips for others who make these.
I made these for friends that came over to watch the game Saturday night. It was a mix of people who enjoy things hot, and those that really don't, so I stuck w/ the recipe provided. I cleaned out the jalapeno of all seeds and veins and went about the stacking process. One mistake I made there that I didn't notice until after they had been on the grill for a few minutes, is that I should have put the toothpick through all the ingredients and down into the pepper, not just as far down as the cheese. the bacon and shrimp started to fall over once the cheese started melting so I just pushed down the toothpick through the pepper and it solved that problem.
Watch your heat on the grill. As noted I put these over low heat, but since everyone's grills seem to be hotter/colder than others, you may need to adjust. Mine were over low heat and after a few minutes I noticed some were getting darker than what I wanted. I just turned off one side of my grill (to use as an indirect source), and moved the ones over there that were the color I wanted on the pepper, but the bacon still needed to crisp up.
So basically I got a nice sear on the pepper and then moved them over to finish melting the cheese and getting that bacon crispy. It took me about 10 minutes to get these ready to go and the crowd began to roar, lol. But here was another rookie mistake I made, but it was more of a personal one.
As noted in the recipe you need to clean out the seeds and veins of the pepper. Well, when you do this you basically take out the heat as well. Once these are grilled, you get this great, sweet taste of the pepper. I had a few who hate spicy/hot food but LOVED these because they weren't hot at all. Of course a few of the guys who wanted some heat (including myself) had me make another batch for us.
This time I left some of the seeds and veins in the pepper while cleaning it out. Same assemble and back to the grill. Still had the same great pepper but also some heat this time. Wonderful! So basically if you want more heat out of your pepper, don't clean it out entirely. If you want no real heat, make sure you clean your "pepper boat" out very well.
I've already been invited over to watch a game this upcoming weekend at a friends house and I've been told I'm making this again! This are a MUST TRY for anyone who enjoys a great popper!
Thanks to the Chef!!
Yo Scotty and Julie - how ya'll doing? Tomorrow's Sil's birthday and she demands poppers so I'm gonna attempt the best recipe I ever had (yours). Wish me luck!
Happy Birthday to Sil! Hope they turn out well, just take the time to get them good and brown. Oh, and lots of alcohol doesn't hurt.