A recipe for Jalapeño Poppers was requested by a reader (thank you so much for reading), so here is my take on it!
I didn’t want to do a typical popper, so I thought I would try something new and use wonton covers instead. My family and I would always go to Montana’s Cookhouse for their Oven Baked Antojitos appetizer. Boy, do I wish we still had one in Montreal. They were so delicious.
We tried to copy the recipe a few years ago, but it was not the same. This inspired me to do an “in between” recipe; a spin-off of poppers.
Bacon, Cheese & Jalapeño Poppers
Ingredients
Poppers
A box of Wonton Covers, thaw them in the fridge overnight or 40+ minutes on the counter
250 g Cream Cheese- room temperature
1/2 cup Shredded Cheese
2 Jalapeño Peppers
1/2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
6 strips of Bacon, cooked and chopped
1 Green Onion, sliced thin (I keep mine in water. Why? I’m growing them– so easy and you can save money!)
3 cloves garlic, diced
Dipping Sauce
2 parts Honey
1 part (or less) Soy Sauce
Red Chili Flakes
Brown sugar
Instructions
While you shred the cheese, slice the green onion, dice the garlic and chop up the jalapeños, cook your bacon slices. Once cooked, allow them to cool and then crumble them.
As you may or may not know, the heat from jalapeños comes from the seeds. Therefore, if you want the poppers to be spicy, leave the seeds in. If not, you can easily remove them.
Put the bacon, softened cream cheese, shredded cheese, sliced green onion, diced garlic and splash of Worcestershire sauce in a bowl and mix well.
At this point, start heating a skillet or a pot of oil for frying the wontons. I mixed in the grease from the bacon pan to add a bit of flavor. Line a baking with parchment paper, and place a cooling rack on top. This will be used once the wontons are fried. It is a good way to allow them to cool, to remove some of the oil, and it will be easy to clean up.
To prepare the wontons:
Have a small bowl of water near you so you can wet your fingers. This will make it easier to handle the covers. Take one cover at a time, wet the edges and put a small spoonful of the cheese mixture into the center. Pull one corner of the cover and bring it diagonally to the other corner. Squeeze the edges together and be sure there are no holes. This is important for when you put them in the oil. You want poppers, not exploding wontons.
Once the oil is heated to about 350-375° F, place 4-6 wontons and allow them to brown. Turn them over once. Each side should be fried for about 2-3 minutes.
Remove from the oil and place on the cooling rack for about a minute.
While they cool, make the dipping sauce.
Simply combine all of the ingredients for the sauce together (they are also listed above). Taste along the way and make it to your liking. Add more brown sugar or honey if you want it sweeter or red chili flakes if you want more heat. All I can say though, is to be careful of how much soy sauce you put in it, it can quickly become overpowering.
The sauce will become a great addition to the dish.
Garnish the poppers with sliced green onion and voila!
Enjoy!
Also, if you have a lot of leftover mixture, you can use it as a great topping for nachos, or in tortilla wraps!