Stuffed Peppers For A Crowd

Stuffed Peppers For A Crowd

Tuesday night I cooked too many hamburgers. I was expecting a much bigger crowd than we actually had. Also, I forget that everyone doesn’t eat like me. Three burgers isn’t overdoing it, is it? Anyway, this is how we recycled those leftover burgers into another meal for Wednesday night’s dinner.

3 cups (before cooking) of rice, cooked in chicken stock

14 bell peppers

Olive oil

4 cups of cooked ground beef,

2 Italian sausages, cooked and chopped

1 large onion, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

1 large jalapeño, chopped

3 large cloves of garlic, chopped

Cajun seasoning

Smoked paprika

Onion powder

Tabasco

Salt and pepper

White wine

Water

Preparation

Cook the rice by substituting the six cups of water with six cups of chicken stock for more flavor. Prepare the peppers by cutting the tops off, removing the seeds and the membranes, and then placing them in a large cake pan with their tops on them. It will probably take two cake pans to hold all the peppers.

Heat a large skillet and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom. Add the onion, celery jalapeño and garlic and stir. Let that cook until the onion starts to clarify. Add the cooked ground beef and stir to mix well. Season it with generous sprinkles of cajun seasoning, onion powder, smoked paprika, Tabasco, salt and pepper.

I didn’t do this, but in hind sight, it might be worth adding a 28 oz. can of tomato sauce and stirring that in. If you do that, let that cook to reduce the liquid a little.

Mix the beef and the cooked rice in a giant bowl. Stir well. Taste and adjust for salt, pepper and cajun seasoning. You want this to have a lot of flavor. Fill each pepper with the beef mixture. As each one is full, place the pepper top back on it. Once they are all full, add a little white wine and water to the bottom of the cake pans. This is just to help steam the peppers.

Place the pans of peppers in a 350º oven, uncovered, for an hour. The peppers should be a little browned on the top, but will be firm, not limp, with a little crunch when you chew them.

Serving

Serve the peppers on a plate next to a big wedge of sausage and cheese bread. Add in a salad, a plate of mixed vegetables, fruit salad and ginger snap cookies. I’d suggest two or three peppers per person. I had three myself, but for some reason that drew comments from my housemates.