Stuffed Hot Cherry Pepper Poppers

These Cherry Pepper Poppers are stuffed with a delicious herb & garlic cheese filling, then baked until bubbling and golden. This recipe is great finger food for parties and entertaining!

You can think of these Stuffed Cherry Pepper Poppers as like a stuffed mushroom, but with a spicy and flavorful pepper in place of the usual mushroom cap. They’re SO tasty!

This recipe is a recreation of a dish I had on a recent trip to Miami, where I had cherry peppers stuffed with chorizo and cheese. I’ve eaten stuffed mushrooms plenty of times, and I don’t know why I had never thought of doing something similar with peppers.

Whenever I see beautiful cherry peppers at the grocery store that are firm and fresh, I buy a bunch of them to make this recipe.

First, a little warning about cherry peppers…they are HOT! And they’re kind of like jalapenos, where sometimes they are not that spicy, but then you randomly get a REALLY spicy one, and there’s absolutely no way to tell until you put one in your mouth. So if you like spicy, proceed, but if you don’t enjoy heat, this might be too spicy for your tastes.

How to Make Stuffed Cherry Peppers:

Start by browning a link of Italian sausage in a skillet, until cooked through and almost crispy like bacon:

Combine that in a bowl with cream cheese, fresh garlic, parsley, egg, bread crumbs (sometimes I put cooked quinoa instead FYI), scallions, and parmesan:

Mix that up:

Cut the cherry peppers in half, and remove all the seeds and as much of the ribs as possible, to cut down on the heat:

(And yes I’m wearing gloves. I always wear them when working with chilies and they help SO much. This is the kind I buy, it’s $6.50 for 500 gloves so they are worth it)!

Lay the cherry peppers out on a pan:

Then stuff each one with a scoop of the filling:

Roast until the peppers soften and the stuffing browns:

For more vegetable appetizers, I love Stuffed Mushrooms, Zucchini Fritters,  Bacon Wrapped Jalapenos, and Chicken Salad in Endive Cups. Enjoy!

Stuffed Hot Cherry Pepper Poppers

Servings: 6

Prep Time: 20 mins

Cook Time: 20 mins

Total Time: 40 mins

These Cherry Pepper Poppers are stuffed with a delicious herb & garlic cheese filling, then baked until bubbling and golden. This recipe is great finger food for parties and entertaining!

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Ingredients

• 1/3 lb Italian sausage
• 4 oz cream cheese softened
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup packed parmesan cheese
• 2 tbsp minced scallion
• 3 tbsp minced parsley
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• salt and pepper
• 1 egg
• 10 oz fresh hot cherry peppers (you can also use pickled cherry peppers in a jar)

Instructions 

• Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
• Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Remove the meat from the sausage casing and crumble the sausage into the pan.
• Brown for about 5 minutes until cooked through and crispy. Let cool slightly, then chop into smaller pieces.
• In a large bowl mix to combine the sausage, cream cheese, bread crumbs, parmesan, scallion, parsley, and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then stir in the egg.
• Halve the cherry peppers and remove the seeds and ribs with a melon baller.
• Stuff each cherry pepper with a scoop of the filling.
• Place on a sheet pan and roast for 20 minutes, until the peppers look softened and the filling is golden brown on top. Enjoy!

Nutrition

Calories: 213kcal, Carbohydrates: 8g, Protein: 9g, Fat: 17g, Saturated Fat: 8g, Cholesterol: 70mg, Sodium: 369mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 2g

Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.

Course: Appetizer

Cuisine: American

Author: Joanne Ozug

Post originally published in August 2014, and updated in May 2018 with more photos and writing. This post contains an affiliate link.