Stuffed Bell Peppers

I remember my mom making stuff bell peppers when I was a kid. I always loved that it seemed to be the perfect combination especially on rainy winter nights. I have never been able to exactly replicate what I remember my mom doing, although I haven't actually ever inquired. But over the past 10 years I have definitely experimented a little bit. Like most things I make they change a bit every time because I don't keep exact track of my movements if it is not completely necessary. 

Several weeks ago Sprouts two weeks in a row seemed to have yellow and orange bell peppers on sale! Two for $1 which is incredible! Because I can't seem to pass up a sale of vegetables like that I found myself with more peppers than I was going to eat on their own. I had a lovely brain storm to make stuff peppers! ESFSW helped me with this endeavor and gets the credits for the photos! Please don't just we are working in sub-prime conditions and this project is on top of both of our full time jobs. The food we create we are also planning to be our dinner so the main purpose is to make dinner, secondary purpose is to provide blog posts! I hope in the future our photography will get more professional looking. But for now it is merely to be pictorially descriptive!

Here is what I used:

Peppers - red, orange or yellow (green work too but I like the flavor of these better)

Ground meat - I used pork sausage for its flavor

Garlic

Onion

Olive Oil

Stewed Tomatoes (canned)

Tomato sauce (canned)

Rice - I used Trader Joe's Brown Rice medley with Rice, black barley and Dikon Radish seeds

Red Pepper flakes

Worcestershire Sauce

Tabasco Sauce

Cheese - I used Herb Goat Cheese

Most of the Ingredients used! I forgot a few when I took the picture.

Here is what I did:

Chop the onion (1 small one or 1/2 a large one). 

Peel 4 cloves of garlic. I don't particularly mind the smell of garlic on my hands it is so much better than the smell of gloves from laboratory work or chemical smell (and yes I am very diligent in washing my hands in lab and when I cook!). If peeling garlic cloves are the bane of your existence then here is a tip for you. Take a clove of garlic and place it on a cutting board. Take a large knife like the one pictured with the onion in the picture above. Put the flat part of the blade over the garlic clove and with the heel of your hand smash the garlic clove using the broad side of the blade.

Smashing a garlic clove.

Once smashed the paper skin will peel off much easier!

Presto! Garlic peeled in 2 easy steps!

In a medium fry pan, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Taking the garlic mince garlic directly into the fry pan.

Olive oil heating

Let garlic simmer 1 to 2 minutes, then add onions and cook til the onions are starting to soften.

Garlic simmering - breath in the aroma!

While the garlic and onion are cooking put a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Depending on the size of the pot, drop peppers into the boiling water and par boil for 10 minutes. This step softens the peppers so it doesn't take as long to bake the peppers before they soften in the oven. Many of my early attempts ended with me looking sadly into the oven after the peppers had baked for an hour with the peppers still pretty crunchy!

I should have used a bigger pot! I had to boil each individually.

While the peppers are boiling the onions and garlic should be done and it is time to add the sausage.

I don't particularily like handling raw meat so I just drop the whole thing in the pan and then break it apart as it cooks with a spoon.

Both me and ESFSW like a little heat to our food so I added some red pepper flakes (just like the ones you get with pizza) to the meat as it cooked. If you don't like spice, you can leave this out. Although I would encourage you to try just adding a bit. A little heat can help bring out the flavors in foods.

Once the meat is completely browned, remove from heat

And back to the peppers! If you are starting to feel like there are a lot of steps, their are! If you are a good multi-tasker it isn't too bad, or if you have a good assistant the process is pretty easy. The hardest thing in cooking things that have multiple steps is the timing of everything and using the waiting time to work on other steps.

So the peppers - doing this next step immediately after they were removed from boiling water will cause small finger burns! Please let the peppers cool down a little bit before handling. Next they need to be de-seeded. What I do is take a small sharp knife and cut a circle around the green stem. Then pull on the step and seeds should come out easily. Any loose seeds in the bottom of the pepper can be dumped out.

This time around I decided to cut the peppers in half, but they can be stuffed whole as well. I cut the peppers the long way and arranged into an baking dish.

Now in a large bowl, combine the cooked meat, drained diced tomatoes and the cooked rice medley (I cooked this the night before). If you tasted the meat and want more spice feel free to add some more spice at this step.

Now evenly divide the meat and rice mixture and spoon into the bell pepper halves.

Now for the sauce! Pour the can of tomato sauce into a small bowl and stir in a dash of both Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. This just give a little bit more complexity to tomato sauce which quite frankly is pretty bland in my opinion. The Tabasco beyond adding some heat also cuts the sweetness of both cooked peppers as well as canned tomato sauce due to the high vinegar content.

After mixing, pour the sauce evenly over the peppers.

Drop large chunks of goat cheese on top each pepper. If using cheddar or some harder cheese wait to top the peppers with it until half way through baking. Place the peppers in a pre-heated 400 F oven and bake for 30 minutes. (Add shredded cheese after 15 minutes and bake til cheese is melted and bubbling)

And here is my final product! Aren't they beautiful. If you want a more toasted top, after you bake them turn on the broiler to low and cook for 2-5 minutes. Watch them carefully so you don't burn them!

ESFSW and I between use ate 3 halves of the peppers and the rest were consumed as leftovers through out the week. We had them on their own because we weren't super hungry, but they can be served with a nice green salad if you need more to eat! Although we did enjoy them with a nice bottle of wine white acquired from the local Trader Joes.

As with most of my cooking, feel free to experiment and deviate from the recipe above. My goal is to provide general guidelines for preparing delicious food, but I want to encourage you putting your own flare on your dishes! I would also like to note that these truly are an balanced meal in and of themselves. Balance of protien, vegetables and grains with a little cheese to boot! I haven't tried to make these vegetarian, but if you are one you could probably subsitute beans for the meat with relative ease. Or just use a rice and lentil mixture. If you frown on rice due to its lower nutritional value feel free to use a more nutrious grain like quinoa.

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!