Shrimp and Cream Cheese Chili Pepper Poppers

A recent  visit to Portsmouth, New Hampshire was the inspiration for what became a delightful adventure in cooking up some of my very favorite things – chili peppers! We had dinner at Poco’s Bow Street Cantina, and while all the food was great, their shrimp and cream cheese jalapeno poppers were really great (they call them Snake Bites). I had only made plain cheese poppers before, so the shrimp was something new for me – but they were just too good to not figure out and enjoy at home. There were a couple of things I knew right off that I would do differently, like not leave the tail shell on the shrimp as they did, and I prefer poppers with the jalapenos roasted and peeled. What I hadn’t expected  to do was choose more than one kind of chili – but there was such a beautiful array of fresh chilis in the store today, I selected three that looked perfect for poppers. And they were!

I chose Red Fresnos,

Yellow Wax peppers,

and  Jalapenos.  The heat of all three are actually very similar, and in the batch I selected, some Red Fresno’s were hotter than the Jalapenos, and some yellow were quite mild and others had medium heat. Luck of the draw, but all three were delicious, each with a distinctive flavor of it’s own. Since I entered this with a spirit of fun, I also decided I would do three different coatings as well…..why not? So here’s a trio of peppers with a trio of coatings: panko breading, dried bread crumb and fish fry mix. I expected to like one more than the other, but  I really couldn’t choose between them – they were all crispy and tasty!

Ingredients for Shrimp and Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos, Red Fresnos and Yellow Chilies Recipe:

• Fresh chili peppers: one type or a mix of jalapenos, Red Fresnos and yellow Wax
• Cream cheese, 1/4 teaspoon per pepper
• Shrimp, 1 or 1/2 per pepper
• Milk or light cream for dredging
• Flour or fish fry mix for coating
• Final coating of choice
• Canola oil for frying, ehough to cover one layer of poppers
• Fresh lime
• Dipping sauce of choice

• To start, thaw shrimp, figuring 1/2 to 1 large shrimp per popper, depending on the size of the chilis.
• Put the peppers on an ungreased baking sheet and pop into a 450 degree oven. Within  a few minutes you will hear them start to sizzle, then just give the pan a shake or turn the peppers over with tongs.
• Continue to roast, checking every other minute or so as the skn blisters and turns brown/black in spots. As they are done, remove to a paper bag, or wrap in foil until the rest are done (10-15 minutes total should do it).  Let them sit in the bag or foil for 10-15 minutes so they can sweat and cool down.
• Peel the skin off (with your fingers, most of it will come off easily, if some remains do not worry about it), cut off the ends, scrape the seeds and membranes off gently. The smoky taste roasting the peppers creates is irreplaceable, and removing the skins means they are nice and tender.
• Now the peppers are ready to stuff – place a slice of cold cream cheese and a shrimp on the cleaned chili. fold to enclose and press together quite firmly.

• When they are all stuffed, dip each one in milk, then in flour or fish fry mix – I used the fry mix.
• Press a generous amount of the mix all over each, then put them in the freezer to chill for fifteen minutes.
• Have ready your final coating of choice, and after the fifteen minutes, roll each peepper in the milk again and then in your favorite coating.
• I found that all the different coatings adhere well, as long as there is not too much skin left on the chilis.
• Put the stuffed and coated poppers back in the freezer for at least 1/2 hour. In fact, if making ahead, you can freeze the peppers at this point and fry at your convenience!

Left to right: panko crumb breading, fish fry coating, dry bread crumbs

When ready to fry, heat vegetable oil to 375 degrees, and immerse the peppers, avoiding overcrowding the pan. Turn if needed and cook until they are a nice golden brown. I did find the Panko encrusted poppers browned more quickly than the others, so they came out of the oil first. Drain on paper towels, and sprinkle with kosher salt immediately.

Left to right: Jalapeno with bread crumb coating, yellow chili with panko coating, red fresno with fish fry coating

Fresh lime juice is awesome on these, and they can be dipped in any sort of hot sauce you like to give them even more of a bite. We used some mango-habanero sauce for these, and then wished we had one of the margaritas we had at Poco’c Cantina to cool things down a bit – I have to wonder what the total heat index of that would be on the Scoville scale!