These can be baked on a rack above a pan in the oven at 475°f until the bacon is crispy, or grilled to perfection over a woodfire! Use any cheeses you like. The classic flavor is cheddar, but I've used several different types of cheese with great results.

12 Fresh Jalapenos

24 thick Bacon Strips (more as needed)

1 cup shredded Cheddar

8 oz Block Cream Cheese

Toothpicks

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Rinse jalapenos. Make a lengthwise slit in the side of the pepper. Begin 1/4 inch below the stem top end and go down to 1/2 inch from the bottom pointy end. (don't cut all the way through either end). The slit will allow in the boiling water below.

Once they've been slit, place them in a pot and carefully pour boiling water over them, making sure to submerge them. Drain them after 1 minute, drain then plunge jalapenos in cold water. This allows them to be stuffed and wrapped without being as brittle or easily broken.

Once the above has been done, drain them well before stuffing.

Allow the bacon strips to warm up a little on the countertop while working with the peppers. Wrapping works much easier with floppy bacon. Straight from the fridge, the bacon will be too stiff.

Wearing plastic food-prep gloves, carefully cut out the seed cores and remove the seedy veins from the jalapenos. Set aside.

Mash the cream cheese and shredded cheese together until well combined. Doing this by hand goes very quickly. Form the cream cheese mixture into 12 small cylinders a bit smaller than the insides of the peppers.

Carefully insert a cream cheese cylinder into each pepper. Don't overstuff, the filling can't be poking out of the peppers. Close the pepper around the filling. Chill the peppers in the freezer for about 20 to 40 minutes, as it's easier to wrap them in bacon if they're slightly firm.

The stuffed peppers will be wrapped in 2 strips of bacon each pepper.

Poke a hole in the end of a strip of bacon. Poke the stem through that hole. Now wrap the bacon in a spiral around the stuffed pepper, the stem holds both ends of the bacon strip in place. If the bacon strip isn't long enough to wrap around, then back up to the stem again, then secure the loose end of the bacon with a toothpick.

Poke a hole in a second slice of bacon the same as above. Poke the stem through that hole and this time wrap it lengthwise from the top of the pepper downward over the pointy tip, then back up the other side of the pepper towards the stem. Slip that end of the bacon over the stem as well. If the bacon isn't long enough to do that, use a toothpick to secure the bacon in place.

Keep doing this until each jalapeno has been securely wrapped in two strips of bacon.

Now put the finished peppers in a plastic bag and freeze them solid overnight in the freezer. Be careful handling them once they're solid frozen, as the toothpick points are very sharp and will poke your hand easily.

The advantage of freezing them before cooking is: however you decide to cook them, now that they're solid frozen, the bacon will cook crispy long before the cream cheese filling melts out.

They're amazing grilled! Just grill them turning often until the bacon crisps all the way around, then serve.

I've baked them in the oven many times at 475°f until the bacon becomes crispy. They need to be turned once to evenly crisp all the way around.

If baking them, please place the frozen stuffed peppers on a rack placed above a baking pan to catch the hot oils they cook out. This ensures they get crispy all the way around.

If they're baked just laying on their sides in a flat pan, the bacon grease pools around the peppers causing the bottom side to be greasy and mushy, which lets the filling leak out and burn to the pan. Crisping the bacon quickly keeps the filling sealed inside. If the bacon doesn't crisp up quickly enough, the melting filling just leaks out. Use a rack to cook these please.

If there's any unused cream cheese filling left over, it makes a nice celery rib filling, or make a quesadilla with it.

It may sound hard or intimidating to make these, but they're very much worth it. And, once you've made them, the next time will be a breeze!