Bacon wrapped jalapeño popper skewers.

8-2-2011 Grilled Jalapeños

Grilled on: Weber Silver One Touch
Charcoal: Kingsford original approx 20 briquettes
Wood: Hickory
Dry rub: none
Sauces: none
Times: 10 min prep, 10 min grilling

First off, I think that bacon wrapping is a sin.  The two most common things I see bacon wrapped are scallops and filets. One of two things will happen if not both, the bacon will be rubbery or the meat inside will be over cooked.  Bacon can take a lot of heat, because it's loaded with fat. Now if you are going to tell me its for flavor, I would not wrap in bacon but use bacon grease.  Pan seared scallops in bacon grease sounds delicious.  There is one way that bacon wrapping works and thats with deep frying and we don't deep or shallow fry at our house. 

This summer we have been fortunate enough that some of Marsha's coworkers have been giving us veggies from their gardens.  It's usually the left overs/over flow veggies.  She brought home a whole bunch of pickling cucumbers and I can say we ate every one.  The most creative way I used them was in a cucumber potato salad made from grilled/baked potatoes.  After that Marsha and I both agreed that we would start adding cucumbers to our potato salad for crunch since she doesn't like celery.  So a couple of days ago Marsha comes home from work and produces a sandwich bag of jalapeños.  She tells me that her coworker has had a hard time giving them away.  I love jalapeños, they are my favorite garnish.  But I knew it would be challenging to figure out a way for Marsha to enjoy them.



Method:  I started a two stage fire, charcoal on one side and none on the other.  While my fire was getting up to temperature I started preparing my jalapeños.  I washed and dried the peppers.  Then I made a slit down the center of each pepper and used the handle of a small fork to remove all the seeds and ribs.  This cuts the spicy hotness of the jalapeño way down.  






Next I made the cream cheese filling for the poppers.  I used cream cheese that had been sitting at room temperature for about an hour.  The warmer the cream cheese the softer it gets.  I added garlic powder, garlic salt, smoked paprika, and fresh ground black pepper and mixed throughly. 

I then scooped the cream cheese mixture into a sandwich bag and basically turned it into a pastry pipe.  I just cut off one corner of the bag and ta-da.  I came up with this a couple of years ago making deviled eggs. 









By squeezing down on the peppers they opened up and I was able to pipe the cream cheese mixture inside perfectly.

I then tightly wrapped them in about a half of strip of bacon and skewered them with the slit side up.  I grilled them slit side down first directly over the coals. Once they had a nice char I flipped them over. When the side without the slit had a nice char I moved them to the other side of the grill without charcoal and covered and let sit 4 or 5 minutes.  I pulled them when the bacon was crispy. I let them cool for a couple of minutes and served them with ranch. 

Result: They were really good.  The bacon was crispy and the jalapeños were firm and the cream cheese was warm and gooey.  I got distracted and let my grill get to hot and the char was a little darker than I would have liked.  Some of the cream cheese did pop out, but that was probably because I over filled them.  This was a great appetizer and we will have them again.