Jalapeño poppers are a popular American Southwest dish made by hollowing out jalapeño peppers, filling them with spiced cheese, and frying them. They can be found frozen or warm in stores, but can also be made at home with variations such as beer batter or hotter peppers added. The peppers are not very hot, but can be spiced up with hot sauce.
Jalapeño poppers are a dish that is made by hollowing out jalapeño peppers, filling them with a spiced cheese mixture, popping them, and then frying them. Though many people classify jalapeños as Mexican cuisine, as they feature hot chiles, they’re likely an invention of the American Southwest, marrying the Latin love of heat with America’s obsession with all things fried. You can find jalapeño poppers made by a variety of companies in the frozen food sections of many make-at-home markets, and they’re also available warm at some stores and markets that offer hot foods. Of course, you can also make jalapeño poppers from scratch at home.
A number of dishes in the American Southwest are made with stuffed peppers, and all of these dishes are fairly easy to make. In the case of jalapeño poppers, the cook starts with the filling, which can be made with cream, cheddar, or jack jack. The filling is usually spiced in some way, sometimes with pieces of chili as well. Next, the filling is scooped into jalapeños that have been hollowed out, and the peppers are dipped in batter or breaded before being dropped into the fryer.
To hollow out whole peppers for stuffing, cooks cut off the top of the pepper and carefully peel it off. If the cut is only made on the outside of the pepper, sometimes the seeds come out. Otherwise, a knife must be inserted into the pepper to collect the seeds. It’s a good idea to wear gloves during this process, as the pepper oils can cause a sting, especially if the mucus membranes are unintentionally touched.
There are all kinds of variations on the basic jalapeño popper. For example, some cooks like to use a beer batter for an extra kick, and bread crumbs are often added to the batter to make it chunkier. Cooks can also experiment with stuffing other peppers or adding hotter peppers into the cheese mix to give the jalapeño bites a bit of a bite. Health-conscious cooks may opt to bake, rather than fry, their jalapeño poppers.
Jalapeño pepper isn’t terribly hot, especially when the seeds and white membranes in the peppers are removed to make jalapeño poppers, but the pepper does carry a hint of kick. When combined with the cream cheese filling and fat breaded outside, the heat of the pepper can be further reduced. For this reason, some people like to have their jalapeño poppers with hot sauce, to bring back some of the heat.
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