Spicy Stuffed Bell Peppers

Ricky and I go out to eat too much. As a result, money is being thrown down the tube. I made a deal with myself that every night for the next two weeks I was going to attempt to make a homemade dinner for us without resorting to store bought/prepared dinners. Nothing wrong with those, I was just out to prove to myself I do have time after work and I can cook decent edible meals with what we have in the house.

My first attempt was steak fajitas, but it wasn't very fantastic was gross. Failure. Last night, Try # 2 was my own twist on stuffed bell peppers.

 In our house we rarely cook with ground beef anymore. We switched to ground turkey for the lower fat content, and if you cook it right, you don't really taste the difference! I actually started cooking with ground turkey well before I ever told Ricky what I was doing. I started out in spaghetti, and then after 3 or 4 times of him telling me how delicious it was ... I let out my secret. He was somewhat resistant to the idea at first because men eat beef, but now we don't cook with beef except for homemade hamburgers.

Back to the peppers. I started out with one package / one pound of lean ground turkey. With that I added the following seasonings in a large bowl and mixed lightly :

•  Sea salt
• Fresh cracked pepper
• Ms. Dash garlic lemon (don't knock it until you try it!)
• Tbsp of soy sauce
• Cumin
• VERY small squirt of A1 Steak Marinade (I know weird... but it adds a little smokiness to the meat!)

 

After I combined this mixture I noticed that I had no onion or jalapenos to add some heat to the meat mixture. Enter beef chorizo to the rescue! We had a half of a tube left from breakfast the other day in the fridge and according to my taste palette, this little meat mixture packs a lot of heat!

So into the skillet goes some olive oil, minced garlic, and some beef chorizo. I know it looks kinda gross, right now, but you let it cook down and it "melts" out of it's solid state and becomes a delicious soupy (for lack of a better descriptive world) mixture.



After that is cooked down and combined, throw (or place gently if you don't want to get violent with your meat) the turkey mixture into the skillet and let the turkey meat suck up all the wonderful spice that the chorizo has to offer. Don't bother it in the pan too much, let it simmer and cook together slowly......otherwise the liquid made from the chorizo will not be soaked up properly and it will be a greasy mess. I found it helpful to put a lid on the skillet and turn down the heat to medium.

While that is cooking, get your cute little bell peppers out, rinse them, chop of the tops and hollow them out. I like to cut down a little farther than the very top, because when you are finished you can use the top for an adorable little lid!  Feel free to lightly salt, pepper, and olive oil the inside of the pepper...I did.

Once the meat mixture is fully cooked.... this is where I am told it gets weird. I dump the mixture into the same bowl as before (after it has been cleaned!) and add half a cup of mixed cheese (any flavor you want will do, I used 4 cheese blend) and 1 egg. I add the egg so that when the peppers cook in the oven, the mixture will solidify together, kind of the way meatloaf does.

Spoon the mixture into the bell peppers (we made three) and pop them in the oven!

I cooked mine on 400 degrees, for about 25 minutes. About half way through I pulled them out, sprinkled a little more cheese on top and popped them back in. Because the mixture is all fully cooked minus the egg and the pepper, you only have to cook them long enough for the pepper to be tender and the egg will cook rather quickly.



Once they are out, let them sit for about 5 minutes for the juices to be reabsorbed, and then have at it! Don't forget to put their tops back on (I forgot to take a picture) it looks too cute.

I served this with a light angel hair pasta/olive oil/basil side but you could serve it with something else, or just by themselves, they are very filling!

Until next time... :-)