Texas Smoked Shotgun Shells

This Tex Mex spin on smoked shotgun shells stuffs manicotti shells with a blend of ground beef, Mexican chorizo, green chiles and jalapeño peppers, and shredded Mexican cheese. The stuffed shells are wrapped in bacon and smoked until the bacon is perfectly crispy then brushed with Texas spicy BBQ sauce.

These spicy BBQ shotgun shells are an amazing appetizer, especially when served with dips like smoked salsa and queso. We’ll get to that later, don’t worry!

Ingredients for Texas Shotgun Shells

Here’s everything you’ll need for the filling:

• Mexican Chorizo – If you have trouble finding it in your area, you can make your own with 80/20 ground pork (or even other proteins like ground chicken).
• Ground Beef – Go with beef that’s at least 90% lean since the chorizo has plenty of fat.
• Diced Green Chiles and Pickled Jalapeño Peppers – These add great flavors and can be swapped for other smoked, roasted, or pickled peppers. (Think: chipotle peppers in adobo or even Mexican chili oil.)
• Ranch Seasoning – This provides a nice little punch but can be replaced with garlic powder, onion powder, and dried or freshly chopped herbs.
• Shredded Mexican Cheese – I’m typically against pre-shredded cheese, but the thick cut Mexican 4-cheese blend (cheddar, Monterey jack, queso quesadilla, and asadero) from Tillamook works great for making a shotgun shells filling.

Mix all these together and stuff it inside manicotti or cannelloni shells before wrapping them in bacon. I had the perfect amount for 24 stuffed shells.

Do you need to parboil the shells before filling?

I’ve seen some recipe creators recommend boiling the shells for a few minutes before filling to prevent any crunchy shotgun shells. In my testing I found it unnecessary with a longer cook at 275ºF like this.

If you plan to have a faster cook at 300ºF or 325ºF, you’ll probably want to boil the shells in water for 4-5 minutes before filling and wrapping.

After the shells are stuffed and wrapped, you can go straight on the smoker or add an optional seasoning. I added a sprinkle of the HEB beef fajita seasoning from my Traeger fajitas recipe, but any BBQ rub or Tex Mex seasoning blend would work well for these stuffed shells.

Making Traeger Shotgun Shells

I tested different temperature ranges developing my smoked jalapeño poppers recipe and found a longer cook at 275ºF produced the best bacon.

Every smoker is different, so you’ll want to check on the bacon pretty regularly in the back half of the cook. Keep an especially watchful eye around your grill’s hot spots and rotate any shotgun shells that are getting a little too crispy.

After the bacon is where you want it, your filling should be well above the safe temperature zone (165ºF). But it’s always a good idea to check with a probe just to be safe.

At the very end, I recommend brushing your shotgun shells with BBQ sauce. I used the Traeger Texas spicy blazin’ BBQ sauce, but any sauce works. My Tex Mex smoked pork tenderloin uses a blend of 1/4 cup dark brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of hot sauce. You could double or triple this blend in a pinch.

After brushing the BBQ sauce on your stuffed shotgun shells, give them about 15 minutes. Once the sauce gets thick and sticky, you’re ready to rock.

If you’re using a homemade sauce like the brown sugar and hot sauce combo above, you may want to crank the temperature a bit to caramelize the sugar faster.

What to Serve with Stuffed Shotgun Shells

The three dips you see pictured here are my smoked guacamole salsa, smoked chipotle salsa, and the smoked queso blanco from my chili cheese nachos.

The first two require a bit of prep in advance, but the queso blanco is super easy to make. Just throw some queso blanco Velveeta in a smoker safe dish with a can of diced green chiles or RO-TEL and a splash of milk or Mexican crema. You can pop this on the smoker in the back half of your cook.

Other great dips for shotgun shells include ranch or creamy jalapeño ranch, sour cream, guacamole, salsa verde, or additional BBQ sauce.

You can’t go wrong here, and I’d love to hear what you end up serving your stuffed shells with. Let me know in a comment or recipe review. I hope you enjoy this recipe!