Game day watch party food can be a challenge when your team is in a different time zone. Incorporate traditional tailgate foods with a morning twist when you add breakfast jalapeño poppers to the menu!
The Godfather and I follow our college football team each year. It’s our alma mater, where we met, got engaged, and were both members of the marching band. I played clarinet and convinced him to join the drum line for a year where he played cymbals since that was all he could play with no musical experience. I make his life interesting. When we moved to California, we found ourselves facing a bit of a conundrum for early football games. When we could catch a University of Miami football game on television, the times would seem a bit funny. A 12 noon game would start at 9 in the morning, closer to the start of our day (before children) than lunch time. It felt strange to serve “traditional” tailgate foods for game watch snacks, so we got creative!
Sometimes we’d have dishes that remind us of home, like lox and bagels, and other times we’d choose to add a breakfast twist to traditional options like making breakfast pizza or breakfast jalapeno poppers! While we now live on the East Coast and no longer find ourselves with a difference between game start time and local time, I still wanted to make some of our breakfast tailgate party favorites. With my little patio jalapeno plant doing quite well, breakfast jalapeno poppers seemed like the perfect thing to make!
The poppers follow the same basic principles as all jalapeno poppers, but I fill them with a cheesy scrambled egg mixture. Then I wrap them in bacon and bake them until the bacon is crisp. A quick note about the bacon. I used a thick cut bacon for dinner because that’s what we had on hand, but the standard, thinner, bacon cut actually wraps much better. When I make these for serving at a party, I buy a package of the regular-thickness bacon.
You definitely don’t have to wait for a football game to make these, we enjoyed them for dinner one evening, but they do come in handy for early game watch parties. Serve with your favorite dip on the side – we usually go with small bowls of sour cream and salsa for simplicity – but something like avocado ranch would be good too. Enjoy!
Breakfast Jalapeno Poppers
Gameday watch party food can be a challenge when your team is in a different time zone. Incorporate traditional tailgate foods with a morning twist when you add breakfast jalapeño poppers to the menu!
Ingredients
- 18 jalapeno peppers
- 1 tbsp butter
- 6 eggs
- 4 ounces cheddar, shredded
- 2 ounces cream cheese
- 8-10 slices bacon
- your favorite dipping sauce, optional
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Melt the butter over medium low heat in a skillet. Crack the eggs into the skillet and cook, stirring constantly until almost cooked.
- When the eggs are almost ready but still slightly under-cooked, add the cream cheese and shredded cheddar. Stir until the eggs have cooked and cheese has melted. Remove from heat and add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside while you prepare the peppers.
- Preheat your oven to 400 F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.
- Wash the peppers, slice in half length-wise, and remove the seeds. Spoon the egg and cheese mixture into the pepper halves and place the halves together. Wrap with bacon. You'll need about half a slice for each pepper, but have extra on hand just in case as this depends on pepper size. Place the wrapped peppers on the baking sheet.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until the bacon has cooked through and browned. Serve warm with your favorite dipping sauces!
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Jennifer
Tuesday 18th of October 2016
So these look absolutely delish! And the hubby would thoroughly enjoy these for breakfast... I'm going to have to make them when he's got some time off the next month and on a more "normal" schedule.