This is the best appetiser I can think of: jalapeño chilli pepper halves filled with a mix of cream cheese and Cheddar slide in the oven and emerge twice as healthy and as just tasty as deep fried jalapeño poppers.
Deep fried food is delicious
Jalapeño poppers, the favourite snack of Jason Mendoza, are disgustingly delicious, breaded and deep fried stuffed jalapeño peppers. Of course, wouldn’t you know it: the most deliciously disgusting things are deep fried.
I always think I am not hugely keen on deep fried food but let’s see: fish and chips. Arancini. Churros. Ebi fry. Doughnuts. I might be keen after all, as it turns out. More delicious stuff is deep fried than you want to admit to yourself, Mars bars notwithstanding.
It must be said that it’s a violent cooking method, always provoking in me unwanted images of missionaries sitting in vats of oil.
The reason why we love oil fried stuff so much is due to the hot oil sealing, searing and preserving juicy and intact the meat that is immersed in it.
A similar thing happens to dough or batter cooked in hot oil: it gets scorched on the outside, amplifying the Maillard’s reaction, whilst only gently cooking the soft inside.
Deep fried medium
The deep fryers’ content is predominantly oil but, as the English Northerners will tell you, it’s because the Southerners are clueless wimps: lard or beef fat is the old school, hardcore, experts’ fat of choice.
I’m indifferent to beef drippings as I’m not a fish and chips connoisseur (that’s where it matters) but I’ll agree with lard: traditionally used for cooking doughnuts in Poland. Though I’ll admit my attempt to fry them in British lard was a stinking flop. The lard must be super pure, and British lard clearly isn’t.
It should be an occasional treat
Sadly, like so many best things in life (sugar, alcohol, endless scrolling) deep fried foods including jalapeño poppers are very unhealthy. Frying! in oil! all those trans fats absorbed into the food!
And there’s totally no denying that deep fried deliciousness is weighty in calories. Contrary to a popular myth, high temperature of oil does not prevent food from absorbing some whilst cooking, it just feels less greasy because it’s crispier.
Plus the batter, the tempura, the breadcrumbs don’t do us any favours of the calorific front.
My stuffed jalapeños are healthier
These stuffed jalapeños are healthy-ish, especially if you believe cream cheese and Cheddar are healthy and I do. They are also so good that you might give up on the comparison with deep fried poppers.
The main chore in preparing them is – well, preparing them for cooking which means slicing lengthwise in half, then deseeding each jalapeño. Kitchen gloves are rather useful and a small knife or a spoon is best used to scrape the core and seeds out.
The filling is simple: cream cheese and grated Cheddar or your favourite sharp hard cheese, with a little cream to loosen it up, and seasoning. If you’d like to amp the chilli factor, ad some chopped chillies to the cheese. Otherwise stick to salt and pepper, and finely chopped coriander or a herb of your choice.
They bake for about fifteen minutes in hot oven, on a lightly oiled baking tray. But you can also place the tray under a grill for about seven to ten minutes. Cooked that way they peppers will be crunchier and the filling more blistered, so it’s the matter of what you prefer.
You can serve them straight from the oven or at room temperature. With ice-cold beer.
Can I swap jalapeños for padron peppers?
If it’s less heat you’re after, by all means use a different type of small pepper instead of jalapeños. Spanish padron peppers can be used, as well as colourful sweet baby peppers available from supermarkets.
I think this snack is the nicer, the smaller the peppers but it doesn’t have to be your thinking. You can happily fill and bake Romano peppers or even smaller bell peppers if that’s what you fancy.
Simply extend the baking time until the filling is bubbling and mind the fact that larger peppers won’t cook through in the time it takes for the cheese to brown and melt.
More snack recipes
Corn ribs from the oven, with homemade dukkah, just like the ones served at Ottolenghi’s Rovi. It’s totally a snack du moment – and de toujours, I hope.
Serrano ham, salami and chorizo oven dried crisps are a wonderful snack; lean and mean protein to munch, not only for ketogenic dieters.
Globe artichokes are best steamed for about half an hour, until leaves pull out easily. Fresh globe artichokes are very tasty and a huge fun to eat: sharing a steamed globe artichoke, pulling out leaves and dipping them in sriracha mayo.
More pepper recipes
Roasted Romano peppers charred under the grill to skin and core easily, marinated in an Ottolenghi-inspired dressing. They will disappear in a flash from your meze party.
Padron peppers, pimientos de padron, a Spanish dish of pan-blistered padron green peppers. A delicious snack from the tapas menu, they can be eaten whole.
Piperade is the Basque take on ratatouille with the heat of espelette pepper. This recipe is easy and simple, like a lot of best things in life.