Stuffed Peppers

Growing up, I hated stuffed peppers.  There actually wasn't a vegetable that I hated more.  I read in college that taste buds change every five to seven years, so I decided to give the things I disliked when I was young another chance. 

I now love green peppers.  I use them in a lot of my cooking now just because I love the moist crunch of them in dishes.  I have been keeping my eye out for a good stuffed pepper recipe, but they all use tomato sauce in them, which I'm allergic to, so I haven't had a chance to try any of them.  For this recipe swap, I received a stuffed pepper recipe from Cooking with Christen.  I was super excited to find that it didn't call for tomato sauce at all, so quickly put it on my meal plan.

Stuffed Peppers
slightly adapted from Cooking with Christen
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil                            
1 onion, chopped
1`rib of celery, chopped                     
1/2 small bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped                   
1.5 lbs ground turkey
1 can French Onion soup                  
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
½ soup can of water           
1 ½ cups raw rice
2 tablespoons basil
salt, red, and black pepper to taste
4 large bell peppers

Directions
1) In a large dutch oven, sauté in a small amount of cooking oil, the onion, celery, chopped bell pepper, and garlic until slightly cooked through. 
2) Add the raw ground beef and brown well.
3) Add soups, water, rice (raw), salt, black and red pepper.  Mix well.  Cook until just heated through (the rice will not be fully cooked at this point, just warmed).
4) Cut the stem ends off of the whole bell peppers.  Scoop out seeds and clean well.
5) Spray a (9×13) baking dish with Pam.
6) Stuff each bell pepper about ¾ full of the rice mixture.  Quickly invert each bell pepper, rice side down, into the baking dish.
7) Put the remaining rice mixture around the bell peppers.  Cover the dish tightly and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes.  Do not open the cover until the cooking is complete.

I have to admit that I didn't make these as directed.  I thought I knew what I was doing and so I didn't read the directions very well.  I cut open the side and stuffed them, which made everything so much more difficult.  The mixture came out the top when I was stuffing them, which resulted in some burned fingers.

I thought this recipe was great though.  This is my third recipe swap in a row using French Onions of some sort, so this time I used canned soup from the store.  I do have to say that I'd prefer using homemade soup both for the cream of mushroom and the french onion soup, but that would take a lot of extra work. 

The peppers were soft, but still had a little crunch, and the stuffing for them was amazing.  It made plenty of extra stuffing so for a meal I ate the stuffing as a side.  The rice came out perfect and took on the flavors of the soups.  I would definitely make this again, I'd just read the instructions better so that I don't hurt myself as bad. 

For a list of all the recipes made during this swap, visit A Taste of Homecooking: Recipe Swap Roundup.