Try these Unstuffed Peppers for an easy, healthy dinner! Our kids actually EAT the peppers when we cut them up and mix them in with the seasoned beef!
Who doesn’t love easy, 15 minute dinners like this? Be sure and try our equally easy Beefy Tomato Soup or this 8 minute air fryer or 15 minute oven dinner, Chinese Boneless Spareribs!
A Dinner Recipe Your Kids Will Love!
Do you love making stuffed peppers? I mean, yes, I do. But my kids will hungrily eat the filling out and leave that big pepper behind. Recently we’ve made more stuffed pepper recipes that I absolutely LOVE. And I have to say our kids actually do eat the pepper now, we’ve got ’em trained;)
I can’t say too much, I did that too for most of my life. We weren’t a big vegetable family growing up so the bowl of frozen peas and carrots was only on the table for special occasions or holidays.
Now we try and have fresh vegetables on the table every night, or at least a dinner that involves vegetables like stuffed peppers. So to prevent our kids from just eating the filling we created this Unstuffed Pepper recipe instead.
All you need to do is dice the peppers and cook them with the beef and onions when you make the “filling”, but the filling is the dinner.
Once you add the tomato sauce and let the beef simmer together with the vegetables…you won’t be able to stop eating it right from the pan.
We like to serve this recipe over rice or pasta like elbow macaroni (really any pasta will do, it’s almost like a meat sauce with peppers) but you can also serve it over cauliflower rice for a low carb dinner!
Piling this beef filling on buns like a peppery sloppy joe also works. A topping for nachos, add beans and make a quick chili…there’s so many things you can do with this Unstuffed Peppers recipe besides just eating it as is!
Do I Have To Make This Recipe With Beef?
Nope, you can use ground turkey or pork or even ground chicken or lamb. The peppers kind of have to stay or this wouldn’t be a twist on a stuffed pepper recipe but you can definitely swap out the type of meat.
On that note, you can absolutely sneak more vegetables into this recipe, too! We have teenage boys in our house now so we’re WAY past trying to get our kids to eat.
WAY past that. Now we just try and keep our refrigerators full of food. Going to the grocery store every 2 or 3 days is not unheard if. ALL THEY DO IS EAT.
But I do feel like we gave them a good food foundation, not making too many separate meals when they were young (I won’t say never, just not often) and introducing them to all sorts of different foods as much as we could. Dinner recipes like this one definitely helped when they were younger, they ate this up like rock stars, and still do!
Cook the whole green peppers, uncovered in boiling water for about 5 minutes; invert to drain well. Sprinkle insides of the peppers lightly with salt. In a skillet cook ground beef, onion and 1/4 cup chopped pepper till meat is browned and vegetables are tender.
You can also pre-cook them in the oven before they're filled. Preheat your oven to the temperature recommended by the recipe, place them in the oven until they are tender, then fill and return the stuffed peppers to the oven for the remainder of the cooking time.
ANSWER: Some recipes call for blanching the peppers to soften them slightly; others do not. Green peppers at a local store were stuffed with a raw ground meat mixture and looked as though they were not boiled or blanched. If you bake peppers this way, they will take longer to cook and will hold their shape better.
When it comes to seasoning your ground beef, wait until after it has been browned and drained. Adding salt to raw ground beef pulls out moisture, drying the meat out and creating steam while it cooks, which prevents it from browning properly.
To cook ground beef with peppers and onions, there are two good options. You can start by sautéing the peppers and onions in oil or butter until the peppers are soft and the onion is translucent, then add the ground beef and continue to cook together.
To boil bell peppers: Cook peppers, covered, in a small amount of boiling salted water for 6 to 7 minutes or until crisp-tender. To sauté bell peppers: Heat a skillet with 2 to 3 tablespoons of cooking oil over medium-high heat. Carefully add bell peppers and cook until just tender, about 10 minutes.
First and foremost, it's essential to precook your peppers. Bell peppers contain more than 90% water, much of which is released during the cooking process. If you cook your stuffed peppers in one fell swoop, that moisture will release and end up in the final dish.
In addition to not getting enough water, some other possible causes of bitter peppers are: Ripening: Peppers grow sweeter as they ripen and turn from green to red, orange, yellow, or purple. For the sweetest peppers, be sure they're fully ripe before picking.
That's because most bitter compounds in food break down with heat. The bitterness doesn't go away completely, but it is lessened. How to Take the Bitterness Out of Bell Peppers: Select ripe bell peppers.
Place the peppers in the boiling water and cook, stirring frequently, for 5 to 7 minutes, or until they feel crisp-tender. The peppers will ideally still have a little “crunch” to them, but the flesh should be notably softer than when the peppers were raw.
Halving them is the preferred method, as it's best to get the fiddly prep done before cooking. Cut each pepper in half through the stalk, then remove the white membrane with a small serrated knife. Scoop the seeds out with a dessert spoon and discard.
Cook the meat first to get that caramelization, then take it out and add in your veggies. The veggies will absorb all of the meaty flavors and scrape up all the delicious bits it left behind. In the end, you'll get caramelized, flavorful meat and tender, not mushy veggies.
Add the onions and chopped bell peppers and cook, stirring, until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the beef, pork, garlic, parsley, salt, black pepper, and pepper flakes. Cook until the meat is browned, stirring with a heavy wooden spoon to break up the lumps, about 6 minutes. Add the rice and tomato sauce and stir well.
Add all meat, onions, and peppers to the skillet and toss to combine. Pour in remaining sauce (the sauce the meat marinated in*) and stir. Allow to simmer on low for a few minutes. Sauce will slowly thicken.
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