Stuffed Mini Peppers

Mini peppers stuffed with seasoned pork and onions

Personally, I love stuffing small peppers, and it is a great meal one can make in advance for work.  I’d rather stuff the small ones I pick up readily at Farmers’ Markets over the large supermarket sized ones — I prefer the veggie to meat ratio when you stuff a smaller pepper, especially since I don’t add in grains.  Even without grains, your choice of stuffing and seasonings can be so versatile!  This is my take, this time around!

1 pound ground pork, beef, venison, lamb or goat, pastured or wild sourced. Mine this time is pork, pastured.
2 teaspoons of a healthy oil, or ghee, IF the meat is beef or venison, or maybe goat. The other selections have innate fats useful for self-cooking.
1 medium white or yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
2-3 tablespoons of Parmasean cheese, grated

Small bell peppers, sliced in half, lengthwise, like boats

In a skillet, put all the ground pork, onion and fennel seed.  You don’t need oil unless you are using a very lean beef or venison or poultry source.  Mush it around while heating at medium high, with a spatula.  You want the meat fully fully cooked (especially if pork or poultry), and the onions translucent to brownish.

Drain off the fats, and discard.  (I do save duck fats, but I draw the line here.)  Add in all the seasonings and continue to cook in your skillet.

Fun little mini-peppers

Take your mini bell pepper halves and stuff them  (I took joy in selecting the most colorful ones I could find.  The green ones up there were purple on the outside.).  The meat will stuff about ten or twelve halves of them, depending on your definition of “mini”.  I only stuffed several (but more than shown above), preferring this time to reserve the rest of my now-seasoned ground pork for other purposes later in the week.  To cook:  Use a grill, use your oven, use your evil microwave if you need, until everything is hot.  Or eat a couple immediately (which I did, which is why they aren’t in the photo…)

Personally, I like my bell peppers crunchy.  Others may choose to pre-roast them, but just don’t pre-roast them to where they are falling apart.  Hard to stuff when they deflate that far.

Advertisement