Stuffed Peppers

A few weeks ago, Phil and I cooked dinner with some of our good friends. We decided to make stuffed peppers. If you've ever been to our house for dinner, you know that we put peppers in pretty much EVERY dish we make, but I surprisingly had never had a stuffed pepper. Luckily, our friend Karen had a great recipe she shared with us. We have made them a few times since then and have altered the original recipe a bit to our liking.  I have a feeling this is going to become a popular dish at the Ellerbroek household!

 

First, a little pepper education: All peppers grow on the same vine. The longer they're on the vine, the sweeter they are, which is also what gives them their different colors.  The green ones are most bitter, yellow is mild in flavor, orange is in the middle and red is very sweet.

4 Peppers

1 lb. Ground Turkey (or Ground Beef or Bison)

Breakfast Sausage (optional)

Onion

Garlic

Carrots

Mushrooms

Additional Pepper of Different Color

Seasoning - Salt, Pepper, Oregano, Garlic Salt, etc.

1 cup Brown Rice

8 oz. Tomato Sauce

1 Egg

1 cup Ricotta Cheese

1/2 cup Cottage Cheese

Mozzarella Cheese

 

Preheat oven to 350.

 

Brown the ground turkey. If you choose to, brown two breakfast sausage rounds and mix in with the meat.  

Chop the tops off of the peppers and gut them. Rinse out so the seeds and membrane are gone. Replace tops. Wrap peppers in aluminum foil and place in a baking pan. Place in oven for 15 minutes. Set aside.

 

In a skillet saute onions, garlic, diced carrots, mushrooms, and pepper in butter. Add meat mixture. Season with salt/pepper/oregeno/garlic salt.  

Cook brown rice.

Once the rice is done, mix in a bowl with tomato sauce, egg, ricotta cheese and cottage cheese. Add cooked meat to this mixture and stir up.

 

Stuff peppers with your meat mixture and replace tops. Wrap in aluminum foil and place in baking pan standing up. Bake for 15 minutes.

 

Remove from oven. If you desire, remove pepper top, add a slice of fresh mozzarella cheese on top of the meat mixture. Place in oven with pepper tops and broil for 5 minutes.

 

Remove from oven and top the peppers with the pepper tops to make them look pretty :)