How To Make Healthy Stuffed Peppers With Vegetable Sauce
These healthy stuffed peppers are easy, gluten-free, and delicious, but they become extraordinary with my mom's fantastic garden vegetable sauce!
Equipment
- Large 7 quart dutch oven - Or two smaller pots with lid.
- 3 quart saucepan
- Large 10" frying pan
- A few bowls
- Turner
- Measuring cups
- cutting board
- knife
- Large spoon
- Blender or Immersion Blender
Ingredients
For The Stuffed Peppers
- 10 large blocky, nice-looking bell peppers
- 1 ½ cups of brown jasmine rice - optional: soak in water with a splash of vinegar overnight to remove phytic acid.
- 2 cups water
- 1 lb pasture-raised and -finished ground beef
- 1 onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- Thyme
- Cumin
- Paprika
- Pepper
- Salt
- 1/2 cup avocado or coconut oil for frying the meat and the peppers, divided. d
For The Vegetable Sauce
- 3 cups tomatoes
- 3 cups peppers
- 4 celery stalks and leaves
- 1 cup onions
- 1 ½ cups carrots
- 3 cloves of garlic
- A few sprigs of carrot greens, parsley, oregano, papalo, and/or dill
- 1 cup water
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup sour cream - use more if you like for more creaminess.
Instructions
Cook The Rice
- I like to cook the rice first and prep the veggies while the rice cooks.
- Add the water and a dash of salt to the saucepan and bring it to a boil.
- Add the rice, cover the pot tightly and reduce the heat to low.
- Cook for about 30 minutes or until the water is absorbed. You'll want the rice to be a bit on the firm side, al dente. Fluff it up with a fork and set it aside without a lid to cool slightly.
Prep the Bell Peppers while the rice cooks
- Cut around the stem end and pull the seed cavity out by the stem. You'll have a hollowed out pepper now. Just reach in carefully and pull out any ribs that remain and shake out the seeds. Set the hollowed pepper into a bowl and proceed with the rest of the peppers.
- Sprinkle a little salt on the inside of the peppers to season them. Drain them upside down in a strainer or just in a bowl. You can pour the salty draining water into the gravy.
Next work on the meat
- Heat the frying pan to hot with some avocado or coconut oil in it. Place the meat into it and brown it. Add the onions and brown them with the meat. Cook till the onions are soft. Add the garlic and stir-fry for a minute. Season the meat and turn off the burner or take the pan off the hot plate.
- Add the rice to the meat and mix well. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Prep the Sauce ingredients
- Use the scraps of the peppers as part of your gravy veggies. Use any not so nice bell peppers for the sauce too. You'll need about 3 cups or peppers chopped. Don't worry about exact measurements and just chop them coarsely, they'll get blended later. I like to have a mix of red and green peppers in the gravy.
- You can use the rice pot, if it's big enough, to make your gravy. It's ok if there is a bit of starch left in it. But you can wipe it out if you want. I usually make 2-3 times the amount of gravy so I can freeze some. And I use a big 8 quart stock pot for it.
- Chop the tomatoes, onions, celery, garlic, and carrots and add everything to your sauce pot. Add beets if you like and any greens you like to include. I find the celery greens enough, and sometimes I only have celery greens to add and no stalks, which is ok too. If I have nice carrot tops on those carrots, I'll add those too. Parsley, dill, cilantro, papalo, and oregano all will work. Use your favorites or what's available.
- Season with some pepper and salt (use the draining water from the peppers instead of salt if you like), add the water, cover the pot, and put it on a medium-high heat till it simmers, then turn the heat down and simmer it on low for about 30-45 minutes or till all veggies are very soft.
Meanwhile assemble your stuffed peppers
- First heat the dutch oven with ¼ cup of coconut oil or avocado oil. Heat to the smoking point.
- Now fry a batch of peppers by laying them on their side into the hot frying oil. Be very careful, splatters are likely and you can get burnt. When the sides are scorched, turn the peppers and scorch all 4 sides this way. It should only take less than a minute per side if your pan is very hot.
- Put them aside and cook the next batch of peppers that way until they are all done.
- Now add stuffing to the peppers. I like to press it in to firm it a little, but you don't want to push hard. The rice might expand a little as they bake later and the peppers might break apart if you put too much pressure on it.
- Next place the peppers back into the dutch oven standing on their bottoms and crowd the pan well so they don't fall over. Fit as many as possible.
- Add just a quarter to half cup of water to the bottom of the pot. Place it into the oven and cook on medium or 375℉ until the peppers are soft and well heated through, about an hour.
- Your sauce veggies should be getting done before the peppers are. Turn off the heat and use an immersion blender to blend it all smooth. Mine isn't the greatest and will leave some chunks, so I prefer to blend it in a blender, not that chunks are bad, but with this sauce I really prefer it smooth.
- Put it all back into the pot and heat it back up to simmer. Turn down the heat to keep it just at or below a simmer to keep it hot till meal time. Just before serving, add the sour cream and adjust the seasonings. It really depends on your taste, how much sour cream you want to add. I like mine creamy, but not too much. So I'd put about half a cup into this amount of sauce. Start with a little and taste it to see if you want to add more.
- To serve, I actually like to put some sauce without sour cream on a plate, swirl a little sour cream in it and put a hot pepper on top to serve. Sprinkle it with some parsley, and it will look so pretty.