Stuffed Peppers

Red, yellow, green! This is not a traffic light, but sweet Bulgarian pepper has finally ripened and pleases with its colorful flowers in the beds and markets!

Juicy, crunchy, delicious salad pepper and asks for the table. And you can cook a lot of dishes from pepper - simple, tasty and beautiful: lecho and stew, appetizers and salads ... There are dozens of recipes, but many of them will call stuffed peppers as a favorite.

Preparing stuffed peppers just eats with pleasure! Stuffing peppers is always a winning option, whether you are going to feed your family with a hearty dinner or invite a large group of guests to a festive meal.

It is not even necessary to serve a side dish with stuffed pepper - everything is there in it: vegetables, cereals, and meat. Here is a self-sufficient dish - stuffed peppers.

You can cook stuffed peppers according to the basic recipe, which I will tell you - or with variations: for example, instead of rice, buckwheat will be tasty and original. The recipe is suitable for cooking on the stove and, with some nuances, for baking in the oven.

Ingredients for Stuffed Peppers

On 1 kg of Bulgarian pepper:

1 cup of rice;
200-300 g of minced meat;
1-2 medium bulbs;
3-5 small carrots;
2-3 tomatoes or 50 g of tomato paste;
Salt;
Ground black pepper and peas - to taste;
Sunflower oil;
Greens.

I recommend mince taking the assorted - pig-beef assortment, and even better would be to buy a piece of meat and twist in a meat grinder.

If you want a vegetarian version of the dish, exclude minced meat, take a little more rice and vegetables, and prepare rice stuffing with browned onions and carrots - as in the recipe for lean cabbage rolls.

It is possible to add dill and parsley to the orange carrot and white rice. And if you still stew together with onions and carrots pieces of red, yellow, green sweet pepper - you get a very beautiful and tasty filling!

Cooking Stuffed Peppers

Boil rice for the filling. Pour 1 part of rice with 2 or slightly more parts of water, add salt and set on medium heat. When it boils, reduce the heat, slightly shift the lid so that the rice does not run off, and, stirring occasionally, cook for a few minutes - until the rice absorbs almost all the water. Then turn off the fire and cover the rice with a lid, let it stand for 10 minutes. Even if the rice turns out to be a little hard, it will reach readiness in pepper.

Put the prepared boiled rice in a wide bowl to cool.

In the meantime, prepare a roast for the filling and gravy. Warming up the sunflower oil in a pan, passera finely chopped onion for 1-2 minutes. Then add the carrot, grated on a large grater, and, stirring, we continue to sauté a couple more minutes. Finally, add tomato paste or tomatoes, rubbed through a sieve. Salt, pepper and turn off after 1-2 minutes.

In a bowl, combine rice, minced meat and half roast, add chopped greens, salt, pepper and mix well.

Prepare the pepper: rinse it and clean it from the tails and hearts with seeds.

Now, if you saute pepper on the stove, you can start stuffing. And if you want to bake it in the oven, then the peppers need to be blanched beforehand - dip it for 3-4 minutes in boiling water, otherwise the baked pepper will remain slightly crispy. Then drain in a colander and wait until cool.

Fill the pepper with minced meat and put it in a saucepan, at the bottom of which we pour 2-3 cm of water. Water should not cover the pepper completely - you can put it in 2-3 layers.

For cooking in the oven, stuffed peppers need to be laid out in a baking dish, at the bottom of which also pour some water, spread the sauce on top, cover with foil and bake at 180 ° C for about 40-45 minutes.

On the stove we cook stuffed peppers under a lid on medium heat for 25-30 minutes, until soft (try the tip of a knife). When the pepper is already soft, lay the second half of the roast on top of it - it will make a delicious sauce.