Rosie's Stuffed Peppers

Hi all:

I was doing some grocery shopping Friday night (exciting eh?) and saw this beautiful bag of peppers which immediately inspired me to get the ingredients for making stuffed peppers. I love stuffed peppers and have my mother to thank for that.  She is a wonderful cook and made this often when I was growing up. It can be a little fussy if you want to make it correctly, but it is so worth it and very healthy.

This recipe is my simple take on my mom's classic recipe. It has simple, healthy ingredients and tastes wonderful. I made this tonight and it was a hit. Here it is in all its red, orange and yellow glory.

Rosie's Stuffed Peppers

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1 bag of mixed sweet peppers - I used 7 (I should have made more!) - washed and patted dry

Approx. 1 1/2 lbs. of lean ground beef

1 large can (28 oz.) of whole tomatoes (could use more if making more peppers)

Approx. 3/4 c. Basmati rice (any rice will do)

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder

Onion powder

2-3 tsp. olive oil

1 - 1 1/2 c. Water

1 - 2 tsp. white sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cut the tops off the peppers, just below the stems and remove all seeds.

Do not throw the tops away! They are the best part, in my humble opinion. I often scavenge the tops from everybody else at the table because once cooked, the underside below the stem is very soft and tasty, especially if charred.

Pour 2-3 tsp. of olive oil into a med-high hot skillet and place the peppers and pepper tops into the skillet to char all sides. Use a splatter screen to protect yourself from the  hot oil that will invariably splash up and onto you if you are not careful. Once the water from the peppers seeps out into the hot oil,  it will make the oil splash out, so be very careful. (An apron is a must here). This is the fussy part of this recipe but makes all the difference, as charred pepper tastes better than uncharred and will also soften up the outside skins.

Once charred, place the pepper bottoms in a large casserole dish that has a lid. Remove the pepper tops to another plate and set aside.

In the same skillet (no need to remove the oil as not much was used and the beef is lean) brown the ground beef at a medium temperature. Once browned, add 3-4 pinches of garlic powder, 3-4 pinches of onion powder, 3-4 pinches of salt and pepper to taste. Mix the seasonings in. Add about 4 handfuls of uncooked basmati rice. You can use any type of rice, but this is what I like to use. Mix all with the ground beef.

The rice will probably not cook through entirely if you stuff the peppers at this stage, so I add about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of water to the pan and slowly simmer the rice for about 10 minutes to cook it before stuffing the peppers. The rice will finish cooking once covered in the oven with the tomato sauce. There is nothing worse than doing all this hard work and having your tasty peppers end up with bits of hard, uncooked rice mixed in with the meat. Trust me. I've done it.

Once the rice is mostly cooked, stuff each pepper with the meat mixture and add the tops back on.

Before adding the can of tomatoes, you must purée them with a hand blender or immersion blender.  I heard about this from Michael Smith, a very well known chef here in Canada. He suggested that using whole canned tomatoes for your tomato sauce was the best way to go because those tomatoes are picked when they are ripe and taste their best and they will taste very fresh in your sauce. He simply put the hand blender right into the can and blended away. So clever, right?

Here is my Wolfgang Puck immersion blender. I love Wolfgang's appliances.

Add the tomato sauce to the peppers. At this point, you can add about 1-2 tsp. of white sugar to the tomato sauce to take away some of the acidity. It really does help. Cover the peppers with a lid and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 - 60 minutes, or until the peppers seem quite soft and the rice seems cooked.

That's it.

Spoon some tomato sauce onto the meat mixture, serve with a fresh salad of Spring greens and you are done.  Now go have a great time stuffing some peppers!

Rosie