Peppers stuffed with meat and rice - 3 most delicious recipes
Summer is probably the best time to cook delicious dishes from fresh vegetables. If you are an amateur gardener, or even a professional, then vegetables ripen in greenhouses and garden beds, and if you are a city dweller, then vegetables in stores become cheaper and delight with a huge variety. When the soul asks for more vegetables, then you want to make hot dishes from them. At such a moment, peppers stuffed with meat and vegetables according to the classic recipe will become a real culinary feast for the whole family.
Go to the garden or the market, come back with colorful ripe peppers and let's cook our delicious lunch together. Almost everyone in my family loves stuffed peppers with meat and prefers a stewed version, when vegetables with filling are cooked for a long time in a fragrant tomato-sour cream broth.
But I decided to introduce you to several ways to prepare this dish. After all, everyone will end up with their favorite recipe.
How to cook peppers stuffed with meat and rice
This is a very simple recipe and you do not need to free up several hours of your time for it. Spend quite a bit preparing vegetables and minced meat, and then watch as they are stewed until tender.
To prepare peppers you will need:
- mixed minced meat (pork and beef) - 500-600 grams,
- sweet bell pepper - 6-8 pieces (depending on the size, small ones may need more),
- rice - 0.5 cups,
- white onion - 2 pieces,
- carrots - 2 pieces,
- tomato paste - 2 tablespoons (or fresh tomatoes - 3-4 pieces),
- salt and pepper to taste.
Cooking:
1. Start by preparing the minced meat for the stuffing of the peppers. The best thing for this dish is the so-called homemade minced meat, which consists in half or pork and beef. You can take store-bought minced meat or grind meat yourself.
Minced meat that you cook with your own hands will definitely taste better, because you will know for sure that only meat was put there.
2. Wash the sweet pepper and clean out the middle with seeds. This is very convenient to do by cutting off the top and removing the core with a spoon. Rinse the inside with water so that no seeds remain.
3. Rinse the rice well and boil it until half cooked. Until it is completely soft, the rice will be cooked already with the minced meat inside the pepper. Rice can be boiled even in cold water, and taken out when a single grain is only slightly harsh in the middle.
Rice will help the minced meat to hold together well and not fall out of the pepper later.
4. Finely chop the onion. Grate carrots on a coarse grater. Then lightly fry them in a frying pan with vegetable oil until they are soft and quite a bit golden.
5. Mix together minced meat, rice and half of the fried onions with carrots. To do this, take a separate bowl. As you stir, season with salt and pepper to taste. Leave the other half of the onion and carrot in the pan.
6. If you are using not tomato paste but fresh tomatoes, then they must also be prepared. Remove the skin from them. It will be very easy to do if you scald them with boiling water. Then grate the pulp on a grater or grind it in a blender. Get your own tomato puree.
7. Stew the second half of the onions and carrots that we have left with tomato puree or tomato paste. If you have tomato paste, then mix it with vegetables and literally after a minute of frying, add a little water to make a kind of sauce. When stewing, add a little salt, as the tomatoes will give a sweet taste.
8. Take prepared peppers and stuff them. Minced meat can be applied with a spoon, and then firmly tamped so that it completely fills each pepper.
If there is minced meat, then it's not scary. This happens to me sometimes and I make several small meatballs, which I then stew with peppers. It turns out very tasty.
9. Place the stuffed peppers with meat and rice in a large saucepan. Ideally, if you manage to fit everything in one dish and so that the open part of the pepper is directed upwards. But it’s not scary if you manage to cook them only on their side. In my experience, minced meat has never fallen out of peppers.
When the pepper is laid, cover it on top with onions and carrots stewed in tomato, which were waiting in the wings in a frying pan. Pour water on top and simmer, covered, for 40 minutes until the pepper is ready.
If the pepper is very large, then you can cook up to 60 minutes, but no more.
Ready peppers are served hot and with sour cream. Bon Appetit!
Stuffed peppers with meat and rice in sour cream sauce
I will share with you the recipe for stuffed peppers in sour cream sauce, which won the greatest love in my family. Perhaps the whole point is how sour cream and tomato, mixed in the sauce, incredibly tasty sets off and complements the sweet bell pepper, and it turns out just an amazing dish. Be sure to try both options and decide which tastes better for you.
The whole secret of this recipe is that you need to stew stuffed peppers in sauce, not plain water. To do this, sour cream and tomato paste are mixed in a ratio of approximately 3 to 1, and then diluted with water to the required amount. Let me remind you that this sauce should be exactly enough to cover the peppers in the pan by at least two-thirds. In this case, the peppers will be perfectly extinguished.
Instead of tomato paste, you can use fresh tomatoes chopped in a blender or even classic ketchup without additives. I cooked with Heintz ketchup and it turned out very tasty.
And now we are watching a video recipe for making stuffed peppers in sour cream sauce.
Peppers stuffed with meat and rice in the oven
There is another option for preparing stuffed peppers, which is also quite wonderful and differs slightly in taste in that the peppers are not boiled and stewed, but baked. At the same time, they are quite dry and without excess liquid in the form of gravy. They can be baked even under the cheese crust, which will only make the dish tastier.
For cooking you will need:
- minced meat (can be mixed) - 500-600 grams,
- sweet pepper - 6-8 pieces,
- rice - 100 grams,
- onion - 1 piece,
- cheese - 150 grams,
- salt and pepper to taste.
Cooking:
1. First of all, prepare the minced meat. Rinse well and cook the rice until half cooked.
2. Cut the onion into small cubes. Then mix together Minced meat, rice and onion. Salt and pepper the filling mixture.
3. Wash and deseed the pepper inside. Cut it lengthwise into two halves to get a kind of boats. So they will be convenient to bake, because you can put them in a wide baking dish or on a baking sheet. Stuffed peppers will not collapse.
4. Fill each half of the peppers with minced meat. Press it down well and smooth it out. Minced meat will not be too crumbly; with this method of cooking, rice will hold it together perfectly.
5. Put the peppers in the oven and bake them for about 20 minutes at a temperature of 180-200 degrees. At this time, grate the cheese. To sprinkle peppers stuffed with meat and rice, any hard cheese to your taste is suitable, the main thing is that it melts well and forms an appetizing golden crust.
6. After twenty minutes, remove the pepper from the oven and sprinkle it with grated cheese. Let the cheese bake and the dish is ready.
If you are not sure about readiness, then first of all check the minced meat, which should be baked completely inside and turn gray. If the minced meat is pink inside, then it is not ready yet.
Peppers will soften when baked in the oven, but will not get soggy, it may fry a little around the edges.
Serve hot with fresh herbs. If desired, you can pour sour cream.
