These poppers are delicious and extremely easy to make.  I’m not the biggest fan of cream cheese so I came up with this recipe as an alternative to the ones that use cream cheese.  This recipe makes 14.

Ingredients: Jalepeno Peppers (7), Monterey Jack Cheese (half of 8oz block), bacon slices (7) cut in half, your favorite seasoning or rub. Im using the taco tuesday sesoning from Flavor God. You can find it here.

PREP

• Take your block of cheese and cut ¼ inch pieces off the block widthwise then cut those pieces in half lengthwise.  You need 12 strips of jack cheese.  If you have larger peppers you may need to cut a few extra.
• I would suggest using gloves for this one.  Slice peppers lengthwise.  It’s okay to leave the stem attached, they look better for presentation that way.  Take a spoon and scoop out the rind and seeds from each half.  That’s where most of the heat lives.
• Take cheese and place it in the little well that you scooped out.

Next, take a slice of bacon and wrap the pepper and cheese.  Start from the bottom of the pepper half and wrap. It is okay to pull the bacon a bit to fit around the popper raw bacon should be a ble to stretch a little. Dont pull too hard and try not to overlap. Here is my example.

Sprinkle the seasoning over the top of all the poppers. 

FIRE

• Light your coals
• After they are ashed over (usually around 15 min) you need to set up your grill for indirect cooking.
• Pour or rake your coals to one side of the grill as seen below.
• Go ahead and place the poppers on the cool side of the grill not directly over the coals. Make sure you place them on cheese side up. You dont want the cheese to melt out.

Cooking time will vary based off of how hot your grill is running. This particular day I was running around 350-400 degrees on average. After about 15-20 minutes check on them. You want that bacon cooked thru with nice color. By the time that happens the pepper will be cooked but will still have some crispness and not mushy. You can slide them over the fire towards the end if you like your bacon a little more crispy.

EAT

Serve immediately.  Pair with a cool sour cream, ranch, or bleu cheese dip and get after it. If you make these comment and let me know how they turned out and if you tweaked anything in the recipe.