Whoa mama, did they ever?!?! What is up with the jalapeno crops this year?? I was careful in picking out pretty green jalapenos with no “veins”, as I call them, that usually indicate the hotter peppers. Well, apparently this year, there is no sure way to tell how hot the peppers are! I sat down at the table, cut and removed seeds from a ton of jalapenos, then carefully stuffed each with cream cheese and wrapped bacon around them…they were so pretty, and I couldn’t wait for them to be cooked!
The burning of my hands and under my fingernails should have been a warning sign, but I assumed it was from touching all the seeds (hindsight 20/20…I should have been wearing gloves!) K took them out and put them on the grill, and we watched the UFC preliminary fights and waited for our friends to arrive while they cooked. The poppers finished before our friends arrived so K – who is not a fan of super spicy food as you may recall from previous posts – grabbed one and popped the whole thing in his mouth…only to find that they were extremely spicy!! He grabbed his glass of water and downed a good portion of it right away, and I tried a pepper right after that only to discover that they were hot even for me! What in the world was going on?? We each tried a second one, thinking that maybe just that one pepper was really hot…nope. They were pretty much all really, really spicy. K was done at that point and so disappointed, because he usually loves poppers.
Our friends arrive (who have kids) and we warned them immediately that they were really hot – but they all (including the kids) grabbed one and popped them in their mouths. And then immediately asked for water. We tried to warn them. The adults, other than K, continued to eat them throughout the night until they were gone and they were good, but geez were they hot!!
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| I was too distracted by the fire in my mouth to actually get a photo of the cooked version… |
Bacon & Cream Cheese Jalapeno Bites
INGREDIENTS
20 jalapeno peppers
1 container of cream cheese
1 package of bacon
40 toothpicks
PREPARATION
- Preheat your grill or oven to 400 degrees.
- Cut jalapenos in half and remove seeds (WEAR GLOVES!!)
- Spoon cream cheese into each jalapeno half.
- Cut bacon slices into 3 pieces, and wrap 1 piece around each jalapeno half, then insert a toothpick all the way through the popper to hold the bacon in place.
- Place poppers on a foil-lined baking sheet or on the top rack of the grill and cook for 20-25 minutes, until the bacon is cooked and a little crispy on the edges.
- Remove and serve (with ranch, if you’d like!)
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