I Came Home From Tulsa Obsessed With a Jalapeño

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The El Rancho Grande neon sign glowing at twilight in Tulsa: a green and red sign reading El Rancho Grande Mexican Food with a neon cowboy, a lit marquee arrow above, on a brick storefront with the street receding behind.
El Rancho Grande, Tulsa. Tex-Mex since 1953, and the sign still earns it

I have been home from Tulsa for exactly two days, and I have talked about peanut butter jalapeños for approximately all of them. Zach has heard about them. The cats have heard about them. My co-workers have heard about them. I may have told the cashier at the grocery store about them, too, even though she didn’t ask.

Here is the thing I cannot let go of. On my first night in Tulsa, David and I ended up at El Rancho Grande, a Tex-Mex room that has been there since 1953 and looks gloriously like it (I mean that as the highest compliment). The menu had something called PBJ Jalapeños: fresh jalapeno peppers stuffed with crunchy peanut butter, lightly battered, fried, and served with homemade pepper jam. I read that sentence three times. Then I ordered it, because I needed to know what the heck y’all are doing out there in Oklahoma.

Folks, it works. It should not work; I want to be very clear that on paper it reads like a dare. But the peanut butter mellows the heat of the pepper, the jam pulls the whole thing back toward sweet, and somewhere in the middle of all that there’s a fried jalapeño just minding its own business. Salty and spicy and sweet and rich, all at the same time. I have not stopped thinking about it since.

Five fried peanut butter jalapeños from El Rancho Grande in Tulsa, golden and breaded, fanned around a small cup of red and green pepper jelly in a paper-lined basket
Yes, it’s a terrible photo. It was taken in a dark restaurant with a phone, and it shows. There will be better ones when I actually make these.

Zach thinks this sounds horrific. He has said so, more than once, with feeling. And I want to go on record now, in public, where it can be used against him later: he is going to eat one. And then he’s going to eat another. And then he’s going to eat a third while telling me he still doesn’t really get it. I have known this man’s eating habits for fourteen years; I know exactly how this ends.

So now I have a project, which is the most dangerous sentence I write on this blog.

The questions, as I currently understand them:

Do I buy a good pepper jelly, or do I make my own? (Making my own is obviously where my brain wants to go, which is precisely why I’m suspicious of it.)

And do I make the El Rancho version (stuffed, battered, fried), or do I take it somewhere else entirely: stuff them, wrap them in bacon, run them on the Kamado Joe until the bacon crisps and the pepper goes soft, and serve the pepper jelly alongside for dipping? Because I think that might be the Kara version. I think the smoke might be the whole point.

Either way: crunchy peanut butter. Only crunchy. The smooth stuff would be a betrayal and I will not hear otherwise.

So consider this the field notes from the obsession, not the recipe. The recipe is coming (at some point; I have to actually make the things first, probably several times, possibly badly). Better photos are coming too, because the one shot I have from the restaurant was taken in lighting that did the jalapeños no justice at all.

More soon. I’m going to go buy some peppers.

P.S. If you’ve had peanut butter stuffed jalapeños somewhere, or you make them, or your grandmother made them and you’ve just been waiting for somebody to bring it up: tell me everything. I am taking notes.

P.P.S. The full Tulsa Experience post (more than one, actually) is coming. Consider this a teaser for a teaser.

P.P.P.S. Zach, if you’re reading this: three. Minimum. I’ve already told everyone.