How to Make Amazing Stuffed Peppers

Hey everyone, welcome to my kitchen. I'm Bethany, and today's recipe is one of my childhood favorites, which is stuffed peppers. This recipe was inspired by my mom's version, which is the one that I loved growing up, and I'm excited to share it with you because I really think this is the best stuffed pepper recipe, or at least it's the best that I've ever had. So let's get right into it. Okay, so the first thing that we want to do is get our peppers ready to go. So we're going to halve these lengthwise, and then we're just going to remove the seeds and the stem, and then we'll place them in just a large roasting pan, and we want it to be able to fit the 12 halved peppers, because we'll have 6 peppers, we'll cut them in half, and then that'll be 12. So it needs to just be big enough that it can fit everything, because we're going to pre-roast the peppers so that we can make sure that they're nice and cooked. We don't want a lot of texture in the stuffed peppers, or at least I don't. I kind of like my stuffed peppers to be a little pulverized, like a really nice roast on them so that there's no crunch to them. Okay, so now we're going to spray this with just a little bit of oil. You can brush it with oil, too. And then we'll sprinkle a little bit of salt into the peppers. A lot of people like to boil or steam the peppers before making them, but I like roasting them because it just gives it a little bit more of a flavor, and we're roasting them anyway, so I just prefer doing that. But you can pre-cook them any way you like. You just want them to soften up a good bit. Then we're going to cover this with some foil. So now we're going to roast these in the oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Okay, so while our peppers are roasting in the oven, we're going to make our stuffing for the peppers. So we chopped up a medium to large onion, and in our pan, I'm using just kind of a regular skillet pan. You can use stainless steel. We're going to do a tablespoon of olive oil, and we're going to add our onion. Add a generous pinch of salt to our onions, and stir those up. And we're just going to cook these until they're soft, not brown. All right, so once the onions are soft, we'll add our meat, and I'm actually using ground chicken, so I'm going to do one pound of that. This is a local ground chicken, so it's in a different type of packaging. You can also use ground beef, but my mom made stuffed peppers recently, and she used ground chicken, and I loved it. I really liked how light it was, and I didn't feel like I missed having ground beef in it. But you can also do one pound of ground beef or turkey, and we're going to cook this with the onion until it's no longer pink. We're also going to give this a nice, healthy pinch of salt, because chicken needs salt. It needs flavor. And let me tell you, this stuffing for the stuffed peppers is so flavorful and so good. That is why I think they are the best that I've found and that I have had, so I'm very proud of them. All right, so our chicken is mostly cooked. It's fine if it's not fully cooked at this point. We're going to now add our garlic. So I have three very large cloves of garlic, and I'm going to press those right in. Okay, we'll cook that in with the chicken and the onions for 30-60 seconds. Okay, so next, we're really going to layer flavor into this dish. So we're going to do a half teaspoon of onion powder, then a half teaspoon of garlic powder. Don't worry, this is not going to be onion-y or garlic-y. We are layering flavor. Trust me on this. Then a very important ingredient in these stuffed peppers, a half teaspoon of dried fennel. This is going to transform these stuffed peppers into a flavorful, flavorful recipe. So if you do not have fennel, I highly recommend you go out and get some. It transforms recipes like this from being very simple to so flavorful. If you ever wonder why sausage is so flavorful, a lot of it is because of fennel. Then we have fresh herbs. So we have several tablespoons of basil and parsley, fresh, and then a half tablespoon of rosemary. And we're using fresh herbs. I like to use fresh because it's going to add just a more pungent flavor. And dried herbs work, you're just going to have to use less. So I'll leave that in the description. We'll put different measurements for dried herbs, but fresh is going to add the best flavor. All right, so for the final ingredients in our stuffing for the stuffed peppers, we're going to be adding rice. And I'm going to show you my secret weapon for making this a little bit easier. I'm going to be using prepackaged rice because this has been a lifesaver. We use these in our house just for Drew to throw rice together really fast with something. And this is making my life very easy with the stuffed peppers. So I don't have to make rice, but if you'd like to make rice, you totally can. But this recipe calls for eight ounces of rice. And the nice thing about this already packaged rice is it's perfectly cooked. We don't want the rice to be super mushy going into this. And then we're going to add one cup of marinara. You can use my San Marzano sauce or store-bought sauce, whatever you like. I just recommend using a marinara because it's going to have more flavor than just canned tomatoes, although you can do that. I will just say the flavor will be, you know, not as good if you don't use a marinara. And then we're actually going to do a quarter cup of chicken stock because this just needs to loosen up just a little bit. So we're only adding a generous splash. We'll mix that all together. And the filling, if you notice at this part, it hasn't really come together. That's because we have one more ingredient and it is the most important, which is our shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano. And we're going to use two-thirds cup. And I freshly grated that. I like to do that in this recipe. And this is just going to add a cheesiness and a creaminess to the stuffing. And we're going to mix that in and we'll just let the cheese and this cook for just a few minutes. We really want it to come together. It'll get nice and creamy. And the starches from the rice will actually start to release. It'll get creamy like a risotto in a way. And we want that. We don't want to just throw it in the stuffed peppers right now. We want that cheese to incorporate and get just a nice consistency. All right, so we've been cooking the rice and the cheese for about three minutes. It's just a nice creamy consistency. It's got that cheese incorporated now, melted in there. And we're going to add just a little pinch of salt. The cheese is enough salt, but just a little pinch. And then black pepper, a nice healthy pinch. So this looks really good. So now we can get our peppers that we're roasting and we'll stuff these. Okay, so our peppers are done roasting and they're ready to be filled. But you'll probably notice that there's a little bit of water in the stuffed peppers and that's just the moisture coming out of them. And what you'll do is just dump that right out. And then we'll put that pepper in our pan. And we'll just do that to the rest of them. Just remove that. And we're going to just put them in a different pan. So I have just a regular baking dish, what I use for a lasagna. I believe it's a 9x13. And then now we'll stuff the peppers. And I'm actually going to use an ice cream scoop for this. I don't know the size of this, but I will link the exact one that I'm using in our description if you want to use it. Because it's a great tool to use for stuffing peppers. We're going to take one scoop of that and just put it right into our peppers. We don't need to fill them to the brim right now. We'll use everything at the end to top everything off. But for now we just want to do one scoop. And you'll just want to pat it down and kind of tuck it evenly into the pepper. Then after we stuff the peppers, we're going to add just a tablespoon of more marinara on top. We don't need a lot of it. I like a lot of sauce, but not in this case. We just want about a tablespoon. Now we're going to bake this uncovered in the oven. I know I didn't add any cheese yet. That is intentional, because in my many tests of this recipe, the cheese just got way too browned and broiled while it cooked with the stuffed peppers. And we want that to be nice and melty. So we're going to bake this 30 minutes uncovered, then an additional 10 minutes with the cheese. And I'm going to be using slices of provolone cheese. You can also do mozzarella and parmigiano reggiano, or just mozzarella. So whatever you like. But we'll bake this, then we'll add the cheese. Alright, so the stuffed peppers are out of the oven, and Drew is here to taste. You haven't been here in a little bit. Yeah, a little bit of a sabbatical there. Happy to be back though. Well, we're glad to have you back. Thank you. I know you really like these, so we'll have you taste test. You can try them out. Drew freaked out when I first made these. My first batch was so good. They were like the best, and then I had some wonky ones in between testing it out. That's insanely good. And the first time I tasted these, I was like truly blown away. This is so good though. We haven't had stuffed peppers in a while because I don't really make them much. I hadn't had them in so many years, and then my mom just made them and reminded me of how much I loved them, so then I made them. And I don't know if it was exactly like this. I don't know if it had the fennel, but I just feel like every time I've made it, I've just kind of strengthened the flavor because I feel like you and I have had bad stuffed peppers or bland stuffed peppers where it's just rice and sauce and a crunchy pepper that's not perfectly roasted. I think the big thing for me is getting that pepper texture just right, where it's not too soft and it falls apart, where it actually has structure. It's soft enough to enjoy. Yeah. I've made so many stuffed peppers lately. Oh my gosh. Every pepper is different. I will say that because I've made these with so many different peppers, and these are thinner and smaller, and then I've used local peppers that I just find are thicker and they take more time. Got it. So watch your pepper selection. Watch your peppers. But yeah, what did you think of the filling too? Do you feel like it's flavorful? There's so much flavor that's coming out of that. What did you think of the chicken versus not using beef, which is pretty common? I mean, like we said, we haven't had stuffed peppers in a while, but I would say that this is the perfect meat to use. Yeah. It tastes light. There's lots of flavor there. So I think it's perfect. I agree. I actually, like I said, I really like the chicken in this versus ground beef, and we eat a lot of beef. So I'm not against it, but you would want to use a lean ground beef if you were to replace that with chicken because you don't want these to be oily. And that's why I like the chicken. It's light, but it's delicious. I hope you guys enjoy these and get to try them, especially if you haven't had stuffed peppers in a while, like us, and you want a new way to make them. I think they're delicious. So I hope you guys enjoy them. And yeah, I think that's it. If you guys try them, feel free to let me know in the comments, or you can let us know on the website. We always appreciate hearing how you're enjoying the recipes. And that's it. So as always, we'll catch you in the next recipe, and we'll see you in the comments.