Better than Mom’s Stuffed Peppers

Today is my Mother-in-law’s 88th birthday. We didn’t know what to get her. What better present to a senior but the gift of food. This is her favorite dish. Happy Birthday Inez!

Growing up, my Mother would always have the big family meal on Sunday. It was usually a roast, stuffed cabbages or stuffed peppers.  Over the years, I grew an aversion to stuffed anything because we ALWAYS had it every week. Until I found this recipe on Epicurious.com years ago. It completely changed the way I felt about stuffed peppers. I now make it for holidays, dinner parties….and now birthdays. 

Why?

Red peppers and allspice.

Red peppers add a nice touch of sweetness to the dish and allspice gives the stuffing a unique taste. Make sure you pick peppers with flat bottoms so they can stand upright in the pot. The produce guy thought I was a bit weird fondling all those peppers.

The Line Up:

Garlic, six flat-bottomed red peppers, fresh parsley, onions.

Ground meat (I use 90% lean which works very well in this recipe), egg, cooked rice (brown for me, please!), tomato sauce (not shown), Hungarian paprika and the magic ingredient….

Allspice.

Start by taking the tops off the peppers…

I love this part. Aren’t they pretty?

Vegetables can be so beautiful, no?

Oh, I’m getting distracted. Sorry.

While you’re preparing the peppers and company, make sure you have your rice either cooked or cooking so it’s done when you’re ready to mix it all together.

Chop the pepper tops, the parsley and onions. This time I cheated a bit and used the pre-chopped onions from the produce department. Seriously – how much chopping can one girl do in a day?

Saute the veggies in a large skillet pan with 2 tbs. olive oil.

Saute until slightly soft. While the veggies are cooking, I prepare the “rest of the stuffing” in my mixer…meat, egg, rice (if it’s ready and cooled), spices (remember ALLSPICE – secret ingredient), tomato sauce, salt and pepper.

Add the sauteed veggies to the mixer….

and mix it up!

Time to start stuffing…

This recipe stuffs six decent sized peppers perfectly. Place the peppers in a pot and cover with tomato sauce…

Cook over medium heat bringing the sauce to a boil. Lower the heat, cover the pot and cook for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, spoon sauce over the peppers – recover and cook for another 20 minutes until the stuffing is firm.

The rest is easy….

I usually top the hot peppers with a bit of mozzarella cheese and serve with mashed potatoes. You can find the complete recipe here.

P.S. This recipe can be made a day in advance and reheated. This is one of the recipes that actually tastes better the day after!