Peppers with Stuff(ing)

This is very important. This is one of those cooking secret things that is incredibly easy and yet impressive. It is a way to have a fantastic meal and clean out your pantry: The art of stuffing a pepper and there is very little art to it. Just take some stuff that probably tastes good together, cook it with rice and stuff it inside a pepper. Not hard.

I knew I wanted to make some peppers last week so I picked up a few at the store. I also knew I wanted sausage in them, so I picked up some Italian sweet sausage. The rest of the below ingredients were things in my pantry and things that could be easily substituted or omitted entirely.

Random ingredients in my fridge

If you are playing along these are the ingredients I used:

- 4 red peppers. Actually one was rotten so I only ended up with three. It is pretty much a guarantee that if I ever plan for a certain amount of one thing I will end up with more or less of that thing but never the amount intended.
- 3 links of Italian sausage. You could use more if you love sausage and/or are German.
- 3 apples. This was one impetus for this meal. We went apple picking last weekend so we have 20 pounds of apples I have to figure out how to dispose of. Since I don’t have a pig to feed them to, I have to use them in basically every meal.
- An onion.
- Some rice (1 1/2 cups pre-cooked). I used risotto because I was completely out of rice (DOH!) Do not use risotto for this meal. It is a pain in the butt. Just use normal rice dude.

It's just sausage. Calm down.

The first thing you want to do for this meal is cook up the sausage. I just browned it in a bit of olive oil, breaking it up as it cooked. I find it easier to do this if you cut off the casing before cooking. You can leave it on though if you are in love with sausage casing.

You want to make sure the sausage is browned before you hit it with the apple. Take the time to chop up the apple into pretty small chunks. Obviously you don’t want a slice of apple sticking out of your pepper. After you throw in the apple, you just want to stir for a minute or two. I wanted to make sure the apple still had a tiny bit of crunch to it.

Ok. Now it is getting exciting.

I’m omitting the next step which is making the risotto. That is because risotto is an entirely different post. Just make normal rice. I wouldn’t recommend the instant kind though. It might just get too mushy after baking it in the pepper. You want a rice with some heft if you can imagine such a thing. After the rice is done just stir in the apple-pepper mix.

Now it's a party.

So at this point my sausage apple risotto is delicious. Really the pepper is just a nice vehicle to deliver the awesome stuffing. Here are the vehicles:

An empty shell of a pepper.

Sometimes when people are filling peppers they do just that – they fill them. I don’t believe in that though. If you fill the peppers you end up with:

These peppers are filled.

That’s fine and all, but that is not what Macheesmo is about. Macheesmo is about stuffing peppers. This is a meal – not a side dish.

These peppers are stuffed.

It’s a subtle difference, but stuff them as high as you can. They will brown up nicely in the oven and just be lovely. Nobody will turn down a pepper because it is “overstuffed” and if they do never let them back in your house again.

So after they are stuffed, put them in a baking pan and in the oven for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. When I pulled them out after these 35 minutes a voice asked me, “Nick, is there a reason why you couldn’t cover these with cheese?” I didn’t have a good answer so I covered them with cheese. This turned out to be a good idea.

Now, some astute readers may notice a discrepancy. I said there were only three peppers after one went bad but in the below photo there are four red things. Surely an error! Well, I had left over stuffing because I planned for four peppers and I ended up with three. The one in the bottom left there is a tomato that I hollowed out and filled. The jury is still out on whether or not this was a good idea.

Add some asiago because why not?

So in the oven for 15 more minutes after the cheese. If you don’t want to add the cheese that is fine, just leave them in the oven for 50 minutes total. You will end up with a lovely browned crusted pepper. The pepper itself will be soft and flavorful, the filling lighter than you would think.

I served it with a salad and a good IPA.

Stuffed full!

I think this was a really solid recipe for stuffed peppers but the point is that many things are a lot better if you stuff them in a pepper and bake them with cheese on top. Next time you are looking to get rid of some produce, don’t forget the humble pepper. It can be a great vessel for your leftover stuff(ing).

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