Lots of people have made and posted similar things. You might have made these yourself already. If so, skip to the photos and drool, then rush to the store and make another batch. If not, follow these instructions and make yourself an amazing appetizer or turn into a full meal, no judgement if that is the case!
Since this was to be an appetizer, I only bought 6 jalapeños and sliced them all in half. I made sure to wear gloves when slicing these. I learned the hard way not to handle spicy peppers with bare hands.
Once slide, remove some of the inside. The more you remove, the less spicy they will be but you will also have more room for filling. Use your own discretion as to how much to remove.
For the filling, I bought some onion & chive cream Cheese and mixed it with some garlic bbq sauce. I used a 2 parts to 1 ration. The 2 being the cream cheese. For a batch of 6 jalapeños, that came out to be 1/2 cup cream cheese and 1/4 cup bbq sauce.
Once the filling is mixed together, add it to your jalapeño halves.
Next comes the tricky part. Wrapping in bacon. You have to be careful not to squish all the filling out of these. Once wrapped, I didn’t worry about using a toothpick or anything to keep it wrapped. The bacon stayed together just fine.
As you see from the photo, I put all of these on a wire grate. I use this for each transport to and from the smoker. I just slide the whole rack in and take the whole rack back out when complete.
Once they are all wrapped, add a good dose of seasoning to the outside. For pork, I tend to use something heavy on sugar with only a little bit of salt.
Since I had to work the day I wanted to have these I prepped them all the night before so they could go right into the smoker the next day. I already had a pork shoulder smoking all day and was planning to just put these in the smoker towards the end.
I put them on the 3rd rack of my MasterBuilt Smoker and smoked them for 3 hours at 225.
You are going to want to eat them right out of the smoker. I totally get that. But if you can be patient, they are best eaten if you let them sit and rest for a little while. I learned this from experience.
Right out of the smoker the cream cheese will be really runny. If you let them rest first, the cream cheese will get a little firm. It will still be warm but that firmness will help with texture and messyness.
As you can see from the finished photo, there are 2 halves missing. They were so good that I ate a couple before I could get a photo taken.
Enjoy!
