I’m going to be honest: I intended this new weekly feature to be part of a weekly fantasy football post. The idea was to chart the guys most frequently named “great plays” by various fantasy gurus, then come back on Monday or Tuesday to see if there’s any consistency to fantasy football guruism.
But really the whole thing would’ve just been an excuse to post a photo and description of something I ate while watching football the week before, the Bold Flavors Snack of the Week — named of course in loving tribute to the @DadBoner Twitter account.
I decided I don’t want to spin the fantasy spin into some sort of meta fantasy web, so here’s the snack alone.
These are bacon-wrapped cream cheese-stuffed jalapenos:
Many variations of these can be found in barbecue cookbooks, often under the name “Dragon Turds.” Supposedly pitmasters prepare them, throw them on the smoker and eat them while they’re waiting for their meat to finish.
Though I actually had my smoker going on Sunday, I made these in the toaster oven (I was hungry and knew they’d cook a lot quicker that way). Very easy to do.
You need:
Bacon (I used pepper bacon because I’m like that)
Cream cheese, softened
Jalapenos
Toothpicks (IMPORTANT!)
I tried making these a couple weeks ago with cheddar cheese and without toothpicks and everything went haywire. The bacon unwrapped from the peppers and the cheese melted out everywhere, so I just wound up with bacon-wrapped jalapenos not really stuffed with anything. So they were still amazing, but not as good as the ones pictured.
To make them:
1) Preheat the toaster oven (or regular oven, I guess) to 400-degrees (Fahrenheit. This is America, dammit).
2) Cut off the stems from the jalapenos and slice them down one side. Remove the seeds and pith. Wear gloves if you plan on touching your eyes anytime within the next 10 hours. Or don’t wear gloves and suffer through the agony of taking your contacts out with your eyes on fire, which is what I do because who has gloves?
3) Spoon cream cheese into the jalapenos. I used about a heaping teaspoon of cream cheese per jalapeno, but I’m working with pretty small jalapenos. Fill those bastards up, you’re going to want that cream cheese.
4) Wrap the jalapenos in bacon and secure with a toothpick. I used about half a slice of bacon per jalapeno, taking special care to cover the top of the jalapenos where the cheese is most likely to spill out.
5) Lay the jalapenos on a toaster oven tray and bake until the bacon looks delicious.
6) Remove jalapenos from tray and make some perfunctory effort to let them cool before eating them, then get impatient and bite into one like a minute later even though you know molten cream cheese will scald your mouth.
They’re delicious. I only made five because I only had five jalapenos, plus because I’d prefer not to die. But five was pretty much as many jalapenos as I can eat. These things are spicy, fellas.
Tedquarters 