Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Stuffed Pepper Snack

Over the summer, our local grocery store has been selling cream-cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped, Anaheim peppers. They look delicious in the counter, but at $5.99/lb., they're a little pricey. Anaheim peppers went on sale so we decided to try to make our own. We made them for the first time a few weekends ago. We cooked the first batch on the grill ... I don't recommend that. The second batch, we baked in the oven ... success! They were incredible.

I've been craving the peppers all week so Sunday night, while Jeff was glued to the Cowboys/Jets game, I was whipping up a small batch for a game-night snack.











Grocery List:
5 Anaheim peppers
4oz cream cheese (at room temp.)
1/4 C shredded cheddar jack (it's what I had on hand, use what you like)
10 strips of bacon

note: batch may be doubled, tripled, quadrupled even - uncooked extras store great in the fridge.

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400
2. Wrap a cookie sheet in foil, spray with non-stick cooking spray (I don't like baked-on messes)
3. Cut the peppers in half lengthwise.
4. Gut 'em, set aside. (the more seeds/white flesh left in them, the spicier they'll be)
5. Whip the cream cheese and shredded cheese together.
6. Stuff 'em. (I use a small spatula to scoop and stuff  it works well)
7. Wrap each stuffed pepper in one slice of bacon. (start at the top of the pepper, tuck the end of the bacon under the first wrap, don't overlap the bacon as you go down, stretch it a little, as needed, to get it to go down the length of the pepper ... the tighter you wrap, the better the cheese will stay in)
8. Bake for 40 minutes.
9. Enjoy!