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This Dish Raises Profile Of Lonely Jalapeño

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Some people jalapeños pack a whole lot of heat. In the pepper world that is certainly not the case.

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TONY “FATSO” SICILIANO

Tribune correspondent

Published: February 12, 2009

In the world of hot peppers, the jalapeño is the equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield: The darn pepper gets no respect.

Think about it. Jalapeños are used on nachos and to spice up an otherwise bland fast-food burger. They're even used in pepper-eating contests, for crying out loud! No respect!

You will never see a Scotch Bonnet pepper on top of a 99-cent burger. You will never see a handful of habaneras casually tossed on top of chips and cheese. Those peppers are respected, unlike the jalapeño and unlike Rodney.

Some people think that the jalapeño packs a whole lot of heat. In the pepper world that is certainly not the case. The jalapeño is considered mild. The pungency of chili peppers is determined and ranked on the Scoville Scale. The number of Scoville units a particular pepper packs determines its ranking. Chemist Wilbur Scoville created his scale as he sought to find how much sugar water it would take to eliminate any hint of heat. His theory was that the hotter the pepper, the more sugar would be needed to eliminate the heat. A corresponding scale was created, and the jalapeño hasn't been taken too seriously since.

After you get past the heat of spicy peppers, they have a very nice flavor to them. The heat you feel in your mouth or on your lips does not count as flavor; it's just heat. Most of the time that heat buries the flavor.

However, occasionally a recipe focuses on knocking down the heat and accenting the flavor of jalapeños. Today's recipe would be one of those.

First we need to pull a Peter Piper, and pick our peppers. Look for long straight jalapeños, about two dozen, and get ready to start performing surgery. You are going to cut off the inedible stem and slice the pepper down the middle through the tip, leaving two equal halves. Keep the halves together, because we are going to put them back together in a few minutes.

As you are looking at the sliced peppers lying in front of you, you'll see the source of much of the peppers' heat. Sure, there is heat to be found in the "meat" of the pepper, but most is in the seeds and the ribs or the membrane.

Before I tell you any more about these delicious smoked pepper concoctions, I have to warn you: Never cut a pepper or handle its seeds without plastic or latex gloves. The pepper's oil will get on your hands, and sooner or later you will wipe your mouth or rub your eyes or pick your nose. The contact will result in paralyzing pain.

After the seeds and ribs are removed, every other step in this recipe is designed to tame the heat of the jalapeno. Sprinkle the cut side of the peppers with sugar. The sugar adds another layer of flavor and, remember, back in Scoville's day, he used the sugar water to cut the heat. Then we smear a little bit of cream cheese into each pepper half. It, too, helps tame the pepper's heat. Finally we slap a cocktail weenie into each pepper and close the pepper halves together.

If you live life on the more daring side, you could pop these bad boys in your mouth as is, but we still have a little more work to do. Wrap each stuffed pepper with a half a piece of bacon and secure it with two toothpicks. Be sure the toothpicks go through the bacon, pepper and weenie and come out the other end.

During the cooking process, even more of the heat from the pepper is eliminated. What you end up with is the actual flavor of the jalapeño, but there is still a nice bite in these peppers. The combination of pepper and cheese and sausage all wrapped in bacon, with just a hint of sweetness, is just magical. Suddenly, this disrespected pepper has a dish of honor to claim as its own.

TONY FATSO'S SMOKED BACON-WRAPPED STUFFED JALAPENOS

24 fresh jalapeños

24 cocktail weenies

1 8-ounce package cream cheese

2 pounds bacon, or 1 strip per pepper

1 tablespoon sugar

Using a sharp knife, remove the stem end of the jalapeño. Then slice the peppers in half. Once sliced, scrape out the seeds and ribs of the peppers with a plastic spoon. Keep both sides of the pepper together; you will want to mate both sides again after they are stuffed. Sprinkle the sugar over the sliced peppers. Then smear a small amount of cream cheese into each pepper half. Next, place one cocktail weenie in each pair of peppers. Once the weenie is in place, sandwich both sides of the pepper and wrap tightly with 1/2 to 1 piece of bacon. Use 2 toothpicks to hold together. Prepare your smoker or your grill for indirect cooking. Preheat and maintain a temperature of 250 degrees. Be sure to have plenty of hardwood on your fire to add even another layer of flavor. Cook for 2 hours until done. After the first hour, move them over direct heat to turn up the temperature and crisp the bacon. You also can bake these in an oven at 250 degrees for two hours and then turn the broiler on for 5 minutes.

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