I didn’t discover pimento cheese until I was well into adulthood, but I can safely say I’ve made up for lost time. It’s in tea sandwiches, enjoyed on the beach with crackers, and even inspired my grits. Today though, pimento cheese is updating a football food favorite: bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers.
When football season cranks up, I love having people over to watch the game — mostly because then I don’t have to watch the football; I can be social and mess around with snacks, including trying fun things that are terrible for me. I can make a batch of something cheesy and meaty, have a taste or two… or three… and then pawn it off on the football fans to polish off.
Since I’ve been obsessed with pimento cheese for the last few years, I decided to try my hand at making a pimento cheese based poppable appetizer. No cracker spreaders here, folks. If I happened to blow through the absurd amount of jalapenos growing in my garden, so be it.
So pimento cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped jalapenos were born. Spicy, cheesy, creamy, and a little crunchy — this little guy has a whole lot of character for very little effort. I was concerned that the pimento cheese would make the insides of the jalapenos oily, but the oil actually runs out of them and onto the pan, helping to cook the outsides of the jalapenos, leaving the inside full of soft, pimento-y cheese. Make sure you use a pan with a lip for this reason, though!
- 8 jalapenos
- 8 strips bacon
- ¼ cup pimento cheese ( homemade or Palmetto brand )
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit.
- Lay out the bacon on a large jelly roll pan. Bake bacon for 10 minutes.
- While the bacon is cooking, coat your hands in cooking oil to protect them from the peppers. Cut each pepper in half, remove the seeds, and the white "ribs".
- Fill each pepper half with pimento cheese.
- Pat the grease off of the bacon. Cut each strip in half.
- Wrap each pimento cheese stuffed pepper half with half a piece of bacon. Optionally secure with a toothpick ( I didn't, but if your bacon is a little short, this will help it stay ).
- Bake on a jelly roll pan at 400 for 20 min.
OMG. Not even 9am and I’m already craving jalepeno poppers. Totally normal. But seriously, these look amazing! LOVE the pimento!
Thank you! The pimento really gives them an extra punch of flavor with no extra added effort. I’m kinda obsessed with pimento cheese right now, actually!
Oh, spciy! I love bacon and jalapenos.