If your childhood was similar to mine, your mother may have made stuffed green peppers with minute rice and ground meat swimming in tomato sauce. (My hubby claims that his mom always used ketchup!)
Frankly, mom – they were never my favorite dinner.
Although I’ve blogged about re-imagining my mom’s stuffed peppers a couple of years ago, I made that batch in the slow cooker for about 4-5 hours and used mozzarella and Field Roast Italian Sausage in the stuffing – which gave them a decidedly Italian flavor. Last week, I had an abundance of colorful bell peppers – but not 4-5 hours to let them cook slowly. With less than an hour before dinner, I decided to try something different that would taste more like the stuffed peppers my mom used to make.
My mom told me she always “parboiled” the peppers before baking them to death in the tomato sauce. So, I thought steaming them for just 3-4 minutes would soften them enough that they only would need to bake for 25 minutes or so in the oven.
Since lovely red, yellow and orange bell peppers are so easy to find at the farmers market or the grocery store, I used a variety to make the dish more colorful.
And instead of the raw instant white rice (remember Minute Rice?) that my mom used in the stuffing, I chose organic long grain brown rice (fortunately I had already cooked a double batch in my new Instant Pot the previous night, so I already had it on hand). Then I sautéed onions, garlic, and organic diced tomatoes to amp up the flavor of the stuffing. As a stand-in for the fatty ground beef, I found that half a package of Gardein Ultimate Beefless Ground gave the stuffing the perfect amount of meatiness – plus Gardein’s cumbles are both vegan and gluten-free!
The recipe is vegan up to this point. You can keep it vegan by adding a vegetable-based cheddar cheese (like Daiya Cheddar Cutting Board Shreds), but I was in a dairy mood so I used Cabot Seriously Sharp White Cheddar.
Depending on the size of your peppers, the stuffing will be plenty for 4 very large peppers or 6 medium peppers. Since my peppers were on the medium side of the size spectrum, I just baked the extra stuffing in a round baking dish to serve on the side.
I used individual ramekins to make serving easy, but you could also use a large baking dish.
After just 25 minutes in the oven, they were perfectly cooked so that the entire pepper was soft and easy to cut – without swimming in tomato sauce.
With just a little retooling, another comfort food from my youth became a healthy mid-week meal. I hope you’ll try these and see if you agree that they are definitely Not Your Mom’s Stuffed Peppers!
- 4-6 bell peppers (yellow, red, orange, or green)
- 1 tablespoon sea salt
- 1½ cup cooked organic brown rice
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
- ½ of a 13.7-ounce package of Gardein Ultimate Beefless Ground, frozen
- 1 15-ounce can Muir Glen organic diced tomatoes, drained and with the juice reserved
- 2-3 tablespoons chopped flat leaf parsley
- 4 ounces white cheddar, shredded
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 3-4 tablespoons organic ketchup
- 4 ounces cheddar cheese (or a vegan version), shredded
- Trim the tops off your bell peppers and remove the core and seeds. Bring a couple of quarts of water to boil in a large pot and add the salt. Place the cored bell peppers in a steamer basket and put the steamer basket in the boiling water. Cover and cook about 3-4 minutes until the peppers are softened. Remove the steamer basket containing the peppers and let them cool.
- Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Please make your rice if you don't already have cooked brown rice on hand from a previous meal.
- Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil and then the onion. Cook until the onion is softened and translucent (about 7-8 minutes). Add the garlic and cook for another 30 seconds or so.
- Stir in the frozen Gardein Beefless Ground and cook for about 4-5 minutes. Add the drained diced tomatoes and rice and cook for a minute to heat through. Turn off the heat.
- Add the chopped parsley and about half of the shredded cheese to the skillet mixture and season with a little bit of sea salt and a lot of freshly ground black pepper.
- In a separate small bowl mix the reserved juice from the can of tomatoes and the organic ketchup.
- Spray a baking dish or individual ramekins with non-stick cooking spray, put in the peppers, and divide the stuffing mixture among however many peppers you are planning to stuff. Use a soup spoon to put the divided stuffing in each pepper and spoon some of the tomato juice and ketchup mixture over the top of each filled pepper. Then sprinkle on the remaining cheese and pop into the oven. [Note - If you are using ramekins, definitely put them on a rimmed cookie sheet to make them easy to get in and out of the hot oven.]
- Bake until the cheese is brown about 25 minutes. Serve right away to your hungry family!
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Please note that my cooking time assumes that you have cooked brown rice already on hand. If you don't, the rice should be the first thing you start - but if you have an instant pot, it only takes about 20 minutes.
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