Homemade Jalapeno Poppers

The trick to jalapeno poppers is making them so the cheese doesn’t run out. My wife (who will be now knows as Mrs. CBQue) found this cool popper tray at Lake of the Ozarks. The best part is that these came with poppers already made. Since I already decided to eat those, I had to make some more to show you the process.

These are actually really simple to make. There are only 5 ingredients used to make them (see ingredients above.)

I took the cream cheese, cheddar cheese and enough Chipotle Tabasco (to taste) and put them into a bowl and put them to the side to soften.

I then chopped the stem off each jalapeno and sliced each one in half. You will want to remove all of the seeds and ribs from the inside of the jalapeno. It is actually kinda fun to leave some seeds in one of them and see who the lucky winner is when everyone digs in (not that I would do that) While I was in the process of cleaning each of these, I looked up a jalapeno corer online which would allow you to clean these without having to slice them (and thus solves the whole cheese leaking problem)

Once you have all of them cleaned out, and you have mixed up the cream cheese bowl, I just take the back of a spoon and fill each one. Once they are filled, I put them back together and set them on a tray.

The best thing you can do with any food is wrap it in bacon, and that is exactly what I am going to do. I figured the best way to keep the cheese from coming out of the bottom is to wrap bacon starting at the bottom and working my way up. I wrapped each one in bacon and used a tooth pick to hold them together.

While I was wrapping these with bacon, I fired up the smoker. I put these on at about 250 degrees for about 2 hours. These are considered done when the bacon is cooked. The best part about these is that the peppers are still a little crunchy, and then there is the bacon and soft cheese.

Here is what the finished products look like. I was a little excited to start watching the SuperBowl and forgot to take a picture of them coming off the smoker.