The Best Ever Stuffed Peppers

My hair stylist Becky gave me this recipe for stuffed peppers and trust me you will love it and you won't ever want to make them any other way again. When I make them I usually do a mix of red, orange & yellow and throw in a green one for the classic stuffed pepper feel. The orange & yellow taste pretty much just like the red so if you can't find them it's no big deal. The flavor of the red pepper is distinctly different than the green, it is a sweeter, milder flavor and unbelievably delicious prepared this way. I don't have exact ingredient measurements for this recipe, it is very forgiving so feel free to add a little of this and a little of that. The secret powerful ingredient is tomato soup, it gives it a perfect flavor with a little sweetness and keeps the filling so moist and flavorful. You may have heard that my other half can tend to be a bit of a picky eater. When I first mentioned stuffed peppers he was more than leery but he devoured these. The 2nd time I made them months later and after several requests, I forgot all about the secret ingredient, they were dry, lacking flavor and certain people were not very impressed. :)
The measurements I have below don't match the pictures (my pictures show about 1.5 to double the normal recipe.

Best Ever Stuffed Peppers

4 medium to large peppers - red, green or various colors
.50 to 1 lb of Ground Beef
1 medium chopped
2 cloves of garlic - minced
1 bag of instant brown rice
1 can of tomato soup at hand (may need 2 if using a larger amount of beef)
1 bag of shredded mozzarella cheese
1 jar of tomato sauce such as Ragu
1 TB EVOO


1. Preheat oven to 350. In a large saucepan heat up the EVOO, once heated add the onion and cook until tender. Once the onion is tender add the garlic until fragrant. Add the ground beef, breaking it up as cooking.

2. While cooking the beef cook a bag of Brown rice according to directions.

3. Wash each pepper and Slice each one in half lengthwise. Remove seeds, stem and large veins.

4. Pour a small amount of sauce on the bottom of a Pyrex baking dish (enough to cover the bottom) Place each pepper open side up into the baking dish.

5. Put a small amount of mozzarella cheese in the bottom of each pepper.




6. Once rice is cooked and beef is cooked, drain the water out of the bag of rice and pour the rice into the skillet with the beef. Turn the burner off. Add the tomato soup. At this point you may need to add a 2nd Soup at Hand (or 1/2 of it )if you are using a full pound of beef or if you are using a Family size bag of rice See the picture below for the consistency. This picture is the beef the rice and the soup all mixed.



7. Once your mixture is ready start spooning it into each pepper up to the top. Then sprinkle (generously) more mozzarella cheese on top of each pepper. Lastly pour tomato sauce all over the tops of each pepper, generously.



8. Put into the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes to an hour (ovens vary). These can be left in the oven at a lower temp to "slow cook" if you are not ready to eat right away also. They are done once the pepper is softened and tender.

9. Once the peppers are soft, sprinkle the leftover cheese over the tops of the peppers and cook until golden browned and somewhat crispy. This can also be done via the broiler but whatever you do DO NOT take your eyes off of them. The cheese can burn very very quickly.



I'm still not used to the whole Blogging thing so I did forget to take a picture of the final product, trust me they were delicious but if you want to see what they look like you'll just have to make them youself. :)

Enjoy!

I Heart The Food Network

I haven't watched the food network in ages so this week I caught up on my television viewing and became inspired. I made a Giada De Laurentis recipe from Everyday Italian called Greek Caponata which was fabulous. It was simple, easy and tasted like a million bucks. I usually doctor up the recipes and make it my own but for this one I went exact and it was perfect. I made this to bring to work for lunches because it is light and a perfect mid day meal that won't put you to sleep and it's healthy - bonus.
For dinner this week I had some boneless sirloin pork chops and found a recipe on one of my favorite sites http://www.allrecipes.com/ it was called Golden Pork Chops. I made quite a few variations to this recipe.

Golden Pork Chops

4 boneless sirloin pork chops
1 onion chopped
1 package of mushrooms sliced
2 cloves of garlic minced
1 can of condensed golden mushroom soup
1/4 Cup of water
1/4 Cup of milk
1/2 teaspoon Thyme
1/2 teaspoon Ginger
dash of hot sauce
salt & pepper
pat of butter
2 tablespoons of EVOO

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Heat a medium skillet, add pat of butter & EVOO, when butter is semi melted add the mushrooms & onions and saute until browning on the edges. Add the minced garlic and cook until fragrant.
3. Pour soup, water, milk, spices, S&P and mushroom mixture into a bowl, stir to mix.
4. Season the pork chops with S&P, garlic powder, onion powder and lightly brown both sides of the pork chops in the same skillet.
5. Add the pork chops to a baking dish and pour the soup mixture even layer over the top of the pork chops.
6. Cover with tin foil and cook for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook for an additional 10-15 minutes. Cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of the pork chops.

These pork chops came out so tender and moist. The sauce had unbelievable flavor. I served this with some yummy french bread for mopping up the juices, rice and Roasted Zucchini with Fresh Thyme from Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller on The Food Network. This was a big hit for dinner, Jeff loved it and will definitely be added as a regular. After dinner there was a lot of the delicious mushroom sauce left so I made a pot of brown rice and added the sauce to the rice to pack with my lunches for the week - delicious!

A New Hobby

My husband is always telling me I should write down my recipes. He's right, with my memory I can barely remember what I did this morning never mind the ingredients to a meal I cooked 3 months ago. So here I am, entering the world of blogging and starting my new hobby. It will be an easy way to keep track of my recipes and be able to share them with my family and friends, disasters and all. If nothing else I know my hubby will be happy that I won't be in the kitchen swearing under my breath that I don't remember the ingredients to something and having the end result be something entirely different than originally planned. Sometimes it works out in my favor and something delicious and new is discovered but not always ... stuffed peppers, ha ha :)