Eggs on the Egg
There is a whole lingo used by users of the Big Green Egg kamado-style grills. As an egghead, I’m always looking at the various forums and finding great tips. The best Big Green Egg forum is the EGGhead Forum.
Recently, I was curious about appetizers and I ran across a a whole “new to me” set of options.
Commercial names for these types of appetizers include jalapeno poppers or sausage slammers (as seen on QVC).
Whenever I look up a recipe, I make sure to do an image search to help me decide what I’m up against. The links above will show you what the finished product will look like. So far I’ve tried Sea Turtle Eggs, Pig Shooters and a bacon wrapped version of Armadillo Eggs.
Shown below are the bacon wrapped Armadillo Eggs. I cut each one into 4 pieces which still makes for a hearty mouthful. Many of these recipes suggest using Jimmy Dean Sausage but not all stores carry it. Jimmy Dean Sausage is mostly ground pork. I’ve had great results using straight up ground pork (which you can spice up as you wish) or pork chorizo sausage. Do not try using any low fat sausage options as you won’t be able to mold the sausage meat very easily.
In the example below I used a pound of chorizo sausage for 6 jalapeno peppers which were cored and stuffed with a Mexican cheese blend. That makes for a relatively thin sausage coating. You can always add more. You can rupture a jalapeno trying to stuff cheese into it so next time I might try the “Sausage Slammers” method of using 1/2 of a pepper stuffed with cheese.
Once I molded the sausage meat around the cheese stuffed pepper, I wrapped each Armadillo Egg in 2 slices of Kirkland Signature Sliced Bacon. I smoked them at ~275ºF for a couple of hours and they were completely delicious.
What I like about this happy family of Big Green Egg appetizers is that there are numerous combinations to try and it is hard to imagine any of them not being awesome!
