JALAPENO POPPERS

 Joyce Saibic

from Jennifer Sawyer

filling is cream cheese, shredded cheddar and garlic powder. Cut peppers in half, clean out seeds and membrane. Fill with cheese and wrap in slice of bacon cut lengthwise. Did these in air fryer at 375 for 11 minutes. Basically til bacon cooks and pepper get a bit soft.

You can also cut a piece out of the pepper, clean, stuff, replace cut piece and wrap in bacon (usually a whole slice) and cook on grill using mostly indirect heat and it will take 30-45 depending on how hot your grill it

Here is how I did it:

I sliced some pork belly into long pencil like strips and cooked it a bit in the pan to render some of the fat so the strip could get crispy in the oven. I like crispy. The recipe called for bacon, but it has too much salt for me. Pork belly is bacon with much less salt, and no nitrates, nitrites, etc.

I cut the jalapeno length wise, scraped out the inside with a grapefruit spoon, filled it with a cheese mixture of cream cheese and shredded manchego, put a pencil strip of pork belly on each end of the jalapeno with wooden skewers, and I broiled the whole mess of peppers in the oven on hi for five minutes, using parchment paper to save on cleanup.

I turned off the oven and let the stuff sit in the warmth for a few minutes.

When I tasted it, it needed salt, so for mine, I added my Benson's salt substitute and that made the taste perfect.

For garlic I used Lawry's California blend. Seemed to be a good choice. I may not have used quite enough.

For the shredded cheese to mix with the cream cheese, I used some Manchego from Sam's Club because a friend took us there this week. I like the taste of manchego, and I had bought a huge chunk. Also, it has a bit less salt than the cheddar in Jen's recipe.

The pork belly came out nice and crisp.

The peppers were still crisp.

It tasted great.

MIke comes for supper tonight, so we will have them for appetizers, followed with left over turkey, grilled Scottish salmon, and anything else we can think of.

It will all go very good with an Athletic Brewery NA stout. Perhaps Maple this time.

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5/10/2021

This time I think I have very hot jalapeno. Cleaning them drove me crazy with coughing, but it may be because I washed them as I took out the insides. The water here is a bit warm, and that seemed to get the scents in the air.

Anyway, I skipped the bacon and just sautéed chopped onion and cilantro in bacon fat for the flavor. Cream cheese, manchego and parmesan were the base. chopped cilantro sautéed with chopped white onion, Paprika, pepper, garlic powder were the spices.

It is in the oven on parchment in the glass oven dish.