I’m back with another recipe you shouldn’t follow if you need exact measurements! I’m big on putting ingredients together and seeing what happens, and I totally understand that that just isn’t gonna work for some people. Today’s recipe was brought to you by me figuring out how many ingredients I could use before they went bad.
The ingredients
Remember that the only really important thing here is “am I going to overcook parts of this before everything that has to cook all the way through is done?”
I used:
- Red peppers
- Ground beef
- 2 Eggs
- Bread crumbs
- Cheese
- Mushrooms
- Onions
- Dry seasonings
Putting everything together
This one was a bit of a balancing act. I started by cutting up my onions and mushrooms so I could get them cooking in a pan while working on everything else. Once they were in the pan I preheated the oven to 350 and got to work on the peppers.
You can halve the peppers or just remove the stem and seeds, it really just depends on how much stuff you need to use and how you want to eat it at the end. I chose to halve mine, also removing stem and seeds. I lightly sprayed a roasting pan, and once the oven was preheated I pre-baked them for 15 minutes. This is mostly personal preference to soften them a bit before filling them with ingredients.
While the peppers were in the oven, I got out a big enough bowl and added the ground beef (you can use any kind of ground meat or not meat that you want, and change the cooking time accordingly), some bread crumbs, the eggs, softened onions and mushrooms, and some spices. My go to spices are typically garlic powder, salt, and pepper. I also added some oregano because I have a ton of it and wanted to work through some of my supply. Mixing it all together is a personal preference. I hate having things under my nails so I opted to use a spatula that I would also use to add the mixture to the peppers.
So now the peppers are ready to be filled! Take some of that cheese and sprinkle or drop it in the bottom of the hot peppers. It should be the first thing to go in. Use whatever cheese you want; I think I used broken up pieces of provolone in some and a shredded cheddar mix in others. Then fill each pepper with as much or as little of the filling as you want, ideally you’ll use all the filling to fill up all the peppers.
Finished dinner
Beef needs to reach an internal temperature of at least 160F to be done, so that’s what I was checking for while they cooked. They went in for 25 minutes at first and I checked them every 5 or so minutes after that until they were done, which I think was a grand total of 35 minutes.
Use the time they’re baking to figure out what your sides are going to be and get them ready. I chose canned corn and instant mashed potatoes.
When done remove from oven, let cool long enough to serve, plate, and enjoy!
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