I am one of those whose food preferences changes with the season – I love hearty warm dishes during Winter, but I crave things that are light and crisp during the Summer. In the Spring, it’s often hard to predict what would “feel” right as there are warm days but warnings of frost in the morning for the DC area.
One of my family’s (yes baby too!) favorite dishes to make during those fickle days and nights are stuffed bell peppers. You get the best of both worlds: the fresh vegetables with the heartiness of a meatball with marinara. It’s a fast dish to put together and the meat mixture easy to adjust to particular palates. The meat seasoning is also how you like it. We prefer things to be very herby with only a minimal amount of salt. But you can adjust the seasoning to please your palate best! Before you bake the peppers, just cook up a little of the meat in a fry pan to see if you like it’s flavor.
This is truly one of those great in-between seasonal type of dishes. We usually serve our stuffed peppers with either some dinner rolls or a baked potato.
Hands on time: 10 minutes
Total time: 60 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- 2 cloves garlic minced or crushed
- 1 small onion grated
- 1 1/2 to 2 tsp dried basil
- 1 1/2 to 2 tsp dried oregano
- 1 1/2 to 2 tsp dried parsley
- 1 1/2 to 2 tsp of Italian seasoning
- 1-2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 3 bell peppers (any color)
- 2 cups of marinara sauce
- 6 1/4 inch slices of fresh mozzarella
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
- Combine the beef, egg, bread crumbs, garlic, onion, basil, oregano, parsley, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper in a medium-sized bowl.
- Spray a 13 x 9 baking dish with cooking spray
- Half, de-stem, and deseed the bell peppers.
- Stuff each bell pepper with about 1/6 of the meat mixture
- Pour the marinara sauce over the stuffed peppers
- Place one slice of mozzarella on each pepper.
- Bake for about 50 minutes or until the inside of the meat reaches 165 degrees.
I love stuffed peppers too. When I graduated college and was first left to feed myself, my mom would sometimes give me them frozen, to cook one at a time whenever I wanted. Hers were whole bell peppers (standing up, with a hole at the top) and contained rice as well as ingredients like yours, as did some I’ve enjoyed from a middle-eastern restaurant, and were just topped with smooth tomato sauce.
I’m going to make a couple different chilies relleno, hopefully tonight, so it was a coincidence that you posted these!
There are so many ways to make stuffed bell peppers
I can’t wait to see your chilies relleno recipe!! I fell in love with that dish when I was studying abroad in Mexico!
Now that I’m thinking about them, I’m craving them, and I’m traveling for work all week and have zero access to a kitchen – thanks a lot
Stuffed peppers….makes me long for the really lucious ones of summer…yum! I guess I need to make these soon!
[...] you with the batter preparation and frying technique.) Oh ya, and here’s a non-mexican Stuffed Bell Pepper recipe you might like from Katja’s Kitchen.
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Making these tonight except with turkey instead of beef…mmm I can’t wait! Thanks for the recipe katja! Since it’s your recipe I know I don’t have to worry about how it’ll taste!
Hooray! You’ll have to let me know what you think of them!
Ohmygosh delicious! And so easy! I had looked up other recipes before that involved boiling the peppers, sautéing the meat AND baking. Yours was so much easier. Delicious, katja, can’t wait to try more recipes!!
Oh I’m so glad they worked out for you!
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