If you have a lot of extra jalapeño peppers, we have a long list of recipes using jalapeños that will help you figure out how to use up the rest.

Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers Recipe

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Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers Ingredients:

You can get the full list of ingredients with measurements in the recipe card below.

• Jalapeño peppers – Small to medium sized jalapeño peppers work better because they cook through quicker than large peppers.
• Cream cheese – I only use full fat cream cheese because I don’t like the taste of Neufchatel cheese.
• Pepper Jack cheese – The spicy cheese adds a little bit of heat to the recipe. If you want it less spicy, you can use cheddar cheese instead.
• Bacon bits – You want the real bacon crumbles, not the crunchy bacon flavored topping that’s made from cardboard.
• Garlic powder
• Salt
• Italian bread crumbs – You could use plain bread crumbs too, but if you use Italian, it cuts out on additional seasoning.
• Butter – We use unsalted butter because these poppers are already salty enough with the bacon and cheese.

How To Make Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers:

Start by cutting your jalapeño peppers in half with a sharp knife.

The stem may or may not come off when you cut these in half. You can leave it. It’s fine and looks nicer for presentation, but if it falls off, that’s fine too.

Quick note: I don’t wear gloves when I’m cutting jalapeño peppers, but you may want to.

Scoop out some of the ribs inside of the jalapeño pepper and discard them.

Fun fact: The heat in jalapeño peppers actually comes from the ribs not from the seeds like most people think. So removing the seeds doesn’t actually get rid of any of the heat.

So, to make these hotter, leave most of the ribs inside. But if you wanna cool them down a little bit, remove more of the ribs. Don’t remove all of the ribs, though, because then you’re left with a bell pepper basically.

Place the jalapeño pepper halves cut side up on a baking sheet.

You don’t need to line the baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper, but you can if you want.

Put the cream cheese in a medium bowl.

Quick note: You need to warm up the cream cheese a little bit. So, what I like to do is stir the cream cheese a bit and rub it onto the bowl with the back of a spoon.

The other ingredients will incorporate better if the cream cheese is soft. However, you don’t want to heat it up in the microwave because it will become runny and won’t actually stuff into the jalapeño peppers very well.

Grate the pepper jack cheese into the bowl with the cream cheese.

I say this a lot, but if you want melted cheese, you’re going to want to grate the cheese yourself rather than using bagged cheese.

Pre-shredded cheese has a coating around it that stops the cheese from clumping in the bag, however it prevents the cheese from melting. So anytime you actually want to melt some cheese you want to a block of cheese.

Add in the bacon bits.

Quick note: You could fry some bacon slices and add that, but that’s way too time consuming for me.

Add in the seasoning.

Stir the mixture until everything is combined.

Stuff the cheese mixture into the jalapeño halves.

The mixture is kind of thick and it’s pretty malleable, so you can actually mold it to fit perfectly inside of the jalapeño half.

In a small bowl, melt the butter.

Add the bread crumbs into the bowl with the butter and stir until you make a mixture that’s the consistency of wet sand.

I use Italian style bread crumbs because they already have seasoning. If you don’t use those, you may want to add a pinch of salt and Italian seasoning to the bowl before you stir.

If you want to add a little extra texture, you can use Panko breadcrumbs, which are Japanese bread crumbs that are little thicker and will give these a good crunch.

Sprinkle the bread crumb mixture on top of the cream cheese mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes until the jalapeño peppers are soft and the bread crumbs are a golden brown color.

If you used small to medium sized jalapeño peppers like we suggested, 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time.

If you used large jalapeño peppers, you may need to cook them just a little bit longer.

Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers: Frequently Asked Questions

More Stuffed Jalapeño Recipes:

If you’re looking for another unique way to stuff a jalapeño, our spicy tuna jalapeño is another really great idea. It may sound like an odd combination, but tuna and spicy peppers go together really well.