Can’t fully cook the rice in Stuffed Peppers? Try this Un- Stuffed Peppers recipe! It’s not as pretty, but it tastes just as delicious without all the work!
I have a confession to make. I seem to be incapable of cooking one of my husband’s favorite meals. For the life of me, I mess up Stuffed Peppers every.single.time. I don’t believe I have EVER been able to get the rice to cook, despite basting numerous times. Therefore supper is usually delayed by up to several hours.
Thankfully, Bill thinks Un– Stuffed Peppers tastes just the same as Stuffed Peppers because I can actually cook it! It’s a foolproof Spanish Rice recipe my Dad came up with. I’m not certain where he got it originally, but if I know my Dad, he has tweaked the recipe anyway.
Un- Stuffed Peppers is a very frugal, adaptable meal for one night, but we usually have enough for leftovers. I love eating it with fresh, homemade, buttered bread. They go together wonderfully! Try serving it alongside Dark and Soft Restaurant Dinner Rolls. So good!
Is “un-stuffed” even a word?
I’ve been able to cut down on the cooking time on Un-Stuffed Peppers further by using an Instant Pot pressure cooker to quickly cook it for only 25 minutes! Plus you don’t need to partially cook the rice in advance!
(That Instant Pot was a seriously good investment for me since I often fail to plan meals ahead. It has allowed me to quick meals that don’t taste like it took them less than half an hour to make! We’ve taken it with us on vacations and plugged it in at the hotel in the morning, set the timer, and came back in the even to dinner ready to serve! And it paid for itself after 2 nights out of town where we didn’t have to pay to eat out.)
Un- Stuffed Peppers
Un- Stuffed Peppers
Can’t fully cook the rice Stuffed Peppers? Try this Un- Stuffed Peppers recipe! It’s not as pretty, but it tastes just as delicious without all the work!
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef (sometimes, I’ll substitute venison)
- 1 large green pepper, cut into large chunks (Frozen peppers work great too.)
- ¼ of a large onion (or equivalent), diced
- 12 oz. tomato paste
- 1 ½ cup brown rice, cooked
- 4–6 Tablespoons sugar, to taste
- salt and pepper, to taste
- water
Instructions
- Brown beef in your largest skillet, drain off the fat. Season with salt and pepper.
- Add peppers, onions, and tomato paste.
- Add enough water to thin out the tomato paste to make it very soupy.
- Season with salt and pepper and add the sugar.
- Cook on low for about 20-25 minutes while the rice is cooking. (30 minutes long will be fine if you’re cooking brown rice.)
- Add the cooked rice and then taste adjust.
- Add enough water to make it soupy again and then cook for another 30-45 minutes or until it is cooked down.
- INSTANT POT DIRECTIONS:
- *This method uses uncooked brown rice.
- Brown beef and drain off the fat. Season with salt and pepper.
- Add the beef along with the rest of the ingredients and 4 cups of water to the instant pot.
- Use the manual setting and cook the meal for 25 minutes.
- Release pressure according to manufacturer’s instructions.
Enjoy!
Yep! We all have those things that we just can’t seem to get right. Just this week I totally botched a batch of hot water cornbread. My mother makes it so well and I can’t count the times I have done it with her, but I get home and do it… A train wreck! Even when it turns out okay, rhe kids look at it funny and pass it by. It just does not look right. Ugghhh… so, that is my Keepin’ It Real.
That bread sounds great! I have been searching for a bread to replace my grocery store bread. The cost of bread has more than double over the last few years! Oh, and the dish sounds good. I have made that before without sugar and form it into balls for cooking… my Mom calls it Porcupine Balls. Yummy!
I can’t get stuffed peppers to work right if I don’t pre-cook the rice! And usually I just use cous-cous since it works better for me 😉 I do like the looks of this recipe, especially because I try to keep frozen pepper strips on hand and they don’t work so well to stuff *L*
Oh well then I’m really glad that I mentioned the bread recipe then Shannon. It is truly fantastic! (I do deviate a bit from the recipe – she says that you can add 3 T. gluten, I add 5 T. It is incredibly soft-nearly the texture of white bread. No kidding.)
I always think that the sugar in the post’s recipe seems weird when I add it in, but then I don’t care. As you may have noticed in my categories, I have a sweet tooth. ;D
Liking the pepper idea Mub! I haven’t got that far in my planning yet, but I’m hoping to grow enough pepper plants this year that I can do something to preserve them instead just enough to eat in the summer. Maybe I’ll give this a try for recipes like this. Thanks!
I do something very similiar. My bell peppers would never be cooked at the top part, only the part that was down in the sauce. I just mix it all together and then lay the bell peppers on top, cut into strips and pour the tomato sauce over it and bake. It still tastes the same but it is cooked!!
Thanks for the tip on the bread!!!!!! I will have to get some gluten. Also, bell peppers freeze well. I just wrap them in a plastic grocery bag and freeze them whole. I pull what I need out and chop it while it is still frozen… into strips for fajitas or diced for most other stuff. If you pre-dice it you can freeze it in one zippy bag and just break off a chunk as needed. Works great with onion and celery, too. One day I am gonna get smart and keep a stock in my freezer this way! 🙂 I just had a thought… chopping it in strips would be great and then it would be ready for fajitas. If you need diced, then the work would be half done. Okay… anyway, I am gonna go on back to my own blog to blog… sorry more the mini-blog moment!! Hehehe!!
Hey, one more thing.. I thought about developing a clip art for “Keeping It Real”, but I don’t want to steal your idea … or seem that way. Maybe you would want to do the clip art with your own “logo”… either way I would like to add a clip to my posts when I am “keepin’ it real”. You can email me direct if you like about that at littlethingstx@att.net . I’ll check back here, too.
I love the idea of this recipe. I love the flavor of stuffed peppers, but don’t know how to make them, either. So you are not alone. This is great. I will make this soon! Thanks for sharing the recipe and linking up to TMTT.
You are so funny…I want to learn how to make stuffed peppers. I did them once and my kids raved, but can’t remember where the recipe came from. I’ll have to track it down for the many of us who want to master it. Did you use this recipe and just put it in the stuffed peppers? Looks yummy.
Thanks for linking up with Tasty Tuesday.
No Jen, I didn’t stuff it back into peppers. So unfortunately this recipe lacks the beauty of a good stuffed pepper, but it doesn’t lack the taste!
great recipe for those of us who can or cant cook stuffed peppers we all need alternatives
OOOH looks like a wonderful recipe, going to give it a try! Thanks for sharing!
Wow, this sounds wonderful! We love rice around here, and any new way we can find to cook it is great! 🙂
We love stuffed peppers, but this way sounds just as good and much easier.
Looks easy and delicious
This sounds scrumptious!
To answer your question about cube steak – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_steak. I usually buy mine already tenderized.
I bet it would be neat to try with venison. 😀
Yum, sounds good! When I make stuffed peppers I use already cooked rice. It works great!
I make unstuffed peppers, too. 🙂 I started doing that when our homegrown peppers were just too small, or too odd-shaped, to stuff.
BTW, I make stuffed (and unstuffed) peppers in the slow cooker. I start with uncooked rice and make sure there’s enough liquid in the pot. As long as I allow enough cooking time, the rice does get cooked.