Cooking with Love

Overstuffed Peppers - mama mia

I just pulled these out of the oven. They are so full, they're about to burst! They have lots of good stuff in them. 

One half stuffed pepper per person should do it. 

This is my mother's recipe. She put raw rice as a bed in the pan along with seasoning and water.

Come on, give this a try.

Ingredients:

4 large peppers, any color(green is the least sweet and takes longer to cook)

1 cup white rice, cooked by sauteeing chopped onion and celery in large saucepan, add the rice to coat and get toasted.

Add 3 cups water with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and let cook until soft. Set aside.

1/2 lb chopped beef, or turkey, or chicken. Brown in frying pan. Add chopped garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Drain very well. Add to rice.

Also add to the mixture:

1/2 cup grated cheese

1/2 can Hunts tomato sauce

Chopped fresh parsley

1 egg

2 TBS olive oil

Mixture will be very thick and sticky.

Prepare peppers by cutting in half lengthwise from stem. Remove all seeds and veins.

In 9x13 pan, pour 1/2 cup raw rice, top with grated cheese, some of the left over tomato sauce, salt and pepper to taste, 2 TBS olive oil. All surface should be covered.

Top with 8 pepper halves. Fill them as high as you can, distributing them evenly. Top each pepper with some tomato sauce, grated cheese.

Put pan on cookie sheet, in case of spillover. At this time, with 1 cup measuring cup, add cold water to one end of filled pan, not to mess up peppers.....be very careful!

Bake in 350 degree oven on center rack for approximately 1 hour. They should be well browned on the tops and the peppers should be wrinkled. Pierce with knife, making sure they're tender.

Your kitchen is going to smell like a restaurant....

Enjoy!