Jalapeño Poppers

by Christopher Flynn — Sunday, August 23, 2009

I have 2 jalapeño plants in my garden, I like to add them to my salsa. Unfortunately due to the wacky weather we've been having here in the north east, my tomatoes are not as prolific as I had hoped. My jalapeño plants however, love the weather we're having. The end result is a lot of jalapeño peppers, what to do with them? Jalapeño Poppers of course!

Spicy, cheesy, fried, what's not to love? I often think about getting them when we're out but the prices some places charge and the few that you get, I usually pass. I've also put off making my own because breaded fried things usually don't turn out as well as I'd like. Yesterday, with a bunch of peppers from my garden, I decided to give it a try anyway.

I searched the internet for recipes and found tons, all different. One breading method caught my eye. It used milk, flour and breadcrumbs but did a breadcrumb dip twice. Basically it went like this: dip in milk, then flour, wait for it to dry. Dip in milk, then breadcrumbs, wait for it to dry. Dip in milk then breadcrumbs, wait for it to dry. The first flour dip gives it an initial coating and is finer than the breadcrumbs. The first breadcrumb dip doesn't quite coat it evenly or thick enough but the second one finishes it nicely. I also put them in the freezer while waiting for them to dry to help harden the poppers for when they get dunked in the oil. The original recipe didn't call for this but it's a trick I use on fried Brie and I figured it couldn't hurt.

Ok, so now we know how to dip, let's prep the peppers. What I did was cut them in half lengthwise and then remove the stem, leaving as much of the top in tact to act as a cradle to hold the cheese. To do this, I just folded the stem towards the cut side and it just came right off. I then used a paring knife to seed and de-vein the jalapeños. Now jalapeños can range in spiciness, a lot of it depends on how they are grown. If yours aren't that spicy and you want them to be, leave some of the veins and seeds in the peppers, not all of it but leave some. This is where most of the heat is. Mine had a nice kick so I took out most of the seeds and veins.

The filling I used was equal parts by weight cream cheese and a mexican cheese blend of shredded cheese. It was good but I think I will use a little less cream cheese next time. Also I probably should have put more cheese in each pepper. I only filled it so it was flush with the top of the pepper, next time I'll mound it a bit. I might also try adding some other things. One recipe used bacon bits, I was tempted to try this but thought for my first attempt I'd go plain. Some recipes even used a pepper jack cheese in the filling to give it a little more kick. I was also thinking Cabot's Habañero Cheddar would be a good choice. (Or even just some diced habañeros) Another recipe I found called for crab meat which I'm not so sure would taste great but I've been wrong before. Experimentation is definitely called for.

For the breadcrumbs, I keep diced bread in my freezer. If I have bread that's a little stale or the ends which I'm not fond of for sandwiched, I dice it up in about crouton size and throw it in a ziplock bag in the freezer. I use them to make croutons and breadcrumbs, it works great and doesn't waste any bread. For breadcrumbs, I use a food processor to grind them up and then toast them on a sheet pan with a little oil at 300 degrees for about 20-25 minutes turning every so often. I think next time I'll add some seasoning because they needed at least a little salt. Maybe some of the sandwich sprinkle from Penzy's that I use for croutons... that might be a bit much though. Again, experimentation is in order.

So now we should have all the parts, here it is in normal recipe form: