What's Cooking: Stuffed Bell Peppers

Now doesn't that just look scrumptious? And it all came together in 30 minutes. Definitely one of my favorite things I have made.

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Lately, I’ve been on a cooking kick - I love coming home from work and making meals for my family, and trying my best at finding the correct balance of seasonings and flavors. Cooking is so much fun for me that I went ahead and bought a cookbook to learn more basics. The other night, I gave stuffed bell peppers a go, using a few different recipes and freestyling along the way to make it my own. If I do say so myself, these were the BOMB, and so easy to make!

The stats: 

• 20 min prep time 

• 10 minute cook time

• Total time: 30 minutes

• Serves 2-4 

What you’ll need:

Kitchenware

• An oven, preheated to 350 degrees F
  

• Some sort of roasting pan

• A skillet

• cutting board & weapon of choice (knife)

• Wooden spoon

• Aluminum foil (optional)  

Ingredients

• 4 red bell peppers 
  

• Ground turkey or beef (whichever you prefer to use)

• Rice of your choice (optional)   

• sour cream (optional)

• Four-cheese mexican blend 

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper

• Seasonings of your choosing 

Steps: 

1. Start off by preheating your oven and washing off your bell peppers. Grab a cutting board and slice off the tops of each bell pepper, so that you can see the seeds inside

2. Cut around the sides of the bell pepper to remove the seeds and excess bell pepper placenta tissue so that they are completely hollow. If some seeds are stuck to the sides, feel free to wash it out in the sink!

3. Place the peppers into your pan of choice to roast. I recommend placing some aluminum foil on the bottom for an easier clean, but if you don't have any, you can skip this step. Drizzle a little olive oil and salt on top of those peppers too

4. Put the bell peppers into the oven for 20 minutes to roast. While that is cooking, we’ll make the ground turkey!

5. Place the skillet on the stovetop and begin heating it on medium high - add some olive oil to coat the bottom while it warms

6. When you feel it is hot enough, grab your ground turkey and place it into the skillet. Then, grab your wooden spoon and begin breaking up and mixing around the ground turkey while it cooks. It may take a while for it to get ready to add seasoning - I waited until it was about ½ to ¾ of the way cooked before starting my seasoning

7. Okay this is the fun part: season your ground turkey to your heart's content. I like to add whatever the hell I want and taste along the way to make sure its balanced out. For this recipe, I added salt and pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and a little bit of oregano leaves. As I tasted, I added more and more, finding a good balance. What’s great about the ground turkey is that you can also add whatever you want to it. We had leftover cilantro lime rice, so I threw that into the mix. If you have any veg you’d like to add, feel free! This part is really up to you!

8. If you would like to add rice to this concoction, now's the time to cook your rice to add to the ensemble. When thats all done (or almost there) you can throw that into the ground turkey and mix it all up

9. Add some mexican cheese to the mix to get the concoction extra gooey 

10. By this point, your oven timer should be more or less going off. Take the bell peppers out of the oven, and now you can add your ground turkey mix inside using your wooden spoon. Stuff and pat the bell peppers as much as you can

11. Add the rest of your mexican cheese on top of the bell peppers and place it back into the oven. Let the finished stuffed bell peppers cook for about 10-15 minutes!

12. Take out of the oven and serve! You can add a spoonful of sour cream on top as well if you'd like for some extra flavor. Otherwise, they taste good as they are. It’s as easy as that, enjoy :)

If you tried this recipe, please do let me know. I may start adding some cooking videos to the blog, but feel free to give some feedback on that too. Feels good to be back, see you soon!