Friday, September 28, 2007

Dinner: Stuffed peppers

I have been living on my own for 6 years now: time really does fly! What I find interesting, is that often times when I'm looking for something comforting, easy, quick and delicious for dinner, I travel back in times and cook something my parents used to make when I was little.

This time it was stuffed peppers. Green peppers were on sale, I was looking forward to another busy week (dancing, volunteering, more dancing, cooking class at Sur La Table, and oh yes, more dancing), and needed something easy to make, delicious and something that would be good as leftovers.

My dad makes stuffed peppers with canned tomatoes or tomato sauce on the bottom of a baking dish or a skillet; my mom can't stand stuffed peppers with tomatoes. I LOVE tomatoes, so decided to go with my dad (at least this time).

Super easy recipe:
1. cook rice (I used Spanish yellow rice that comes in little packets with seasoning) careful not to overcook
2. separately cook ground beef (or turkey, or chicken) with onions and garlic, don't forget to season with salt and pepper or any other spices (I was a bit shy on the seasonings because the rice was already seasoned)
3. combine rice and ground beef mixture with some canned drained tomatoes
4. put some canned tomatoes or tomato sauce on the bottom of an oven-proof dish
5. stuff green peppers with the rice/beef/tomato mixture and stand them up in the oven-proof dish
6. cover with some aluminum foil and bake at 375F for about 45-60 minutes depending on how crunchy or tender you want the green peppers to remain
7. serve with cheese and sour cream

Substitutions, etc
* add rinsed and drained black beans or garbanzo beans
* use cous-cous or orzo instead of rice
* go vegetarian and add mushrooms, cut up peppers, and corn
* spice it up with jalapeno peppers in the filling

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now you've got me hungry for these, too; I've been craving homemade cabbage rolls from my childhood for weeks. The funny thing is, I didn't even LIKE them when I was young - but now I could just cry for all the times I passed them up. Got a good recipe for those, too?

Unknown said...

Made these last night for the family (and their friends)using hot italian turkey sausage, a little cumin, salt & pepper and a dash of red pepper flakes in the mix. Not a single one was left. Great recipe!