Stuffed peppers, the national dish of Bulgarian, Moldavian and Romanian cuisine, can be safely attributed to the traditional summer dishes. For its preparation, peppers, rice, and minced (most often beef) minced meat, purified from seeds, are used. Stuffed peppers are boiled in water or tomato sauce and served as an independent dish. But not all housewives agree with this. They still puzzle over how to serve stuffed peppers, and come up with more and more side dishes. Some of them are presented in our article.
Which side dish is suitable for stuffed peppers?
To preserve most of the vitamins and minerals, modern housewives prefer not to cook stuffed peppers, but bake in the oven. The rest of the cooking technology is not much different from traditional recipes. We offer to stuff the vegetables with ground beef and rice, then bake them, and also tell you what to serve with stuffed peppers to make the dish juicy and beautiful at the same time.
Step-by-step cooking is as follows:
- Wash fresh bell pepper (1 kg) under running water, cleanse the seeds, keeping the stalks, and cut it in half lengthwise.
- Prepare a filling of 700 g of ground beef, pre-cooked until half-cooked rice (3 tbsp. Tablespoons) and vegetables fried in vegetable oil (onions and carrots). Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Stuff the sweet pepper halves with the prepared minced meat and put them in a deep baking dish.
- Prepare tomato puree. To do this, ripe tomatoes are passed through a meat grinder, then bring the tomato in a saucepan to a boil and grind it hot through a sieve. Add spices to taste in the resulting puree, let it boil again, and then pour the tomato into a shape with pepper.
- Stuffed peppers are baked in the oven for about 1 hour under a layer of foil, while the volume of tomato sauce should be reduced by three. The finished dish is sprinkled with fresh herbs before serving.
In this case, there is no question as to how to serve stuffed peppers. Photos of dishes prepared according to the above recipe are presented above. Half of green stuffed pepper on a bright red tomato puree looks very stylish and elegant. Enjoy your meal!
Delicious stuffed pepper sauce
Those people who prefer to serve stuffed peppers without a side dish will like recipes for delicious dish sauces. Especially by the way they will be to baked pepper, where there is very little gravy as a result of cooking in the oven. In this case, you can serve stuffed peppers as an independent dish on a separate plate, after pouring it with specially prepared sauce.
We offer two versions of the sauce: sour cream and garlic and tomato. The first sauce is prepared on the basis of sour cream (20%) with the addition of garlic, spices and herbs. To prepare it, beat the whisk in one bowl with sour cream (250 g), garlic (4 cloves) squeezed through a press, a pinch of salt and black pepper. Greens in the form of chopped fresh or dried dill are added as desired. Ready sauce can be served in a special saucepan or pour peppers directly on top to soak them better, become more juicy and fragrant.
Since stuffed peppers according to the traditional recipe, as a rule, are cooked in tomato sauce, they are served with it. Therefore, the option proposed below for the preparation of tomato sauce is more suitable for baked peppers in the oven, with or without gravy.
For tomato sauce you will need blanched and rubbed through a sieve tomatoes (1 kg), spices in the form of black and red pepper, salt, garlic (1 clove), onion (2 pcs.), Vegetable oil. In the process of cooking, tomato puree is first brought to a thick consistency, and 5 minutes before the end, garlic, spices and salt are added to it. Onions are fried in vegetable oil in a separate pan. Then it is combined with tomato puree and served on the table with stuffed pepper.
Stuffed Peppers with Mashed Potatoes
The sauce is sauce, but many garnish with stuffed pepper is still not enough. For example, hearty potatoes, boiled rice or some other cereal. And the first thing that comes to mind when you need to decide what to serve with stuffed peppers is to make mashed potatoes.
To prepare this classic side dish, boil peeled potatoes in salted water. Boil it for 25 minutes from the moment of boiling water or until cooked. After this, the water from the pan must be drained and the potatoes should be baked with a potato masher, gradually adding melted butter (50 g) and warm milk (200 ml) to the mashed potatoes. Serve the cooked side dish with stuffed pepper immediately. When serving mashed potatoes, you can pour gravy in which pepper was stewed.
When preparing a traditional side dish, you can deviate slightly from the rules. For example, potatoes will turn out to be much more aromatic and tastier if you add garlic, dill or cheese squeezed through a press into it.
Fried young potatoes to stuffed peppers
If the preparation of stuffed pepper occurs at the beginning of summer, when the sale is full of young potatoes, it is him, and not mashed potatoes, it is better to submit to the side dish. At the same time, it can be cooked directly in the peel, which contains the most useful substances for the body.
Consider another option with which you can serve stuffed peppers. A side dish in the form of young potatoes is prepared in the following sequence:
- Wash small potatoes in a peel with a brush and a sponge.
- Boil it until half cooked in salted water for 10 minutes after boiling.
- Remove the potatoes from the water, dry and put it in a pan with vegetable oil.
- Fry on all sides until golden brown. At the end of the cooking process, add crushed clove of garlic and herbs to the potato.
- Garnish for stuffed peppers ready. It remains to put it on a plate to the main dish and can be served.
Delicious crumbly rice garnished with pepper
Despite the fact that rice is added to the stuffing for stuffed peppers, it is also often served as a side dish to the main dish. Less commonly used buckwheat or other cereals. It would seem that rice is absolutely not the product with which to stuff stuffed peppers. But actually, the taste of these two dishes goes well with each other.
The secret to making loose rice for a side dish is that cereals should not be washed or soaked before cooking. Only in this case will it be possible to preserve the structure of rice and prevent it from boiling over.
So, pour a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil into the bottom of the dry pan, heat it and add rice (1 tbsp.). Stir rice with a wooden spatula until it becomes transparent. Now you can add boiling water (1.5 tbsp.), Pre-salt it (1 teaspoon). Cover the pan and leave the garnish to simmer over low heat until cooked. Opening the lid and stirring the rice is not worth it. When serving, the side dish is laid out at the bottom of the plate, and stuffed peppers are already placed on top of it. Enjoy your meal.
How to serve stuffed peppers beautifully : photo and recipe for an unusual side dish
Minced meat is far from the only filling option for cooking pepper. Vegetarians and fasting people prefer to cook this mushroom dish. At the same time, in order to make stuffed pepper very useful, brown rice is used in the recipe instead of plain white. According to this cooking technology, the vegetable halves with the filling are baked in the oven in tomato sauce. After that, it will be necessary to beautifully serve the stuffed peppers to the table so that even true meat eaters could not resist their appetizing appearance.
Based on 4 servings, you will need to peel the seeds and cut in half along two large red peppers. At this time, almost until ready, boil brown rice in a ratio of 1: 2 (1 glass of rice - 2 glasses of water or vegetable broth). Grind the mushrooms. Combine rice, mushrooms and a portion of tomato sauce in one bowl. The filling should be moist enough, but not liquid. Stuff the halves of peppers with the resulting mass, pour in the remaining sauce (a total of 1 ½ cups will be needed), cover with foil and send the dish to the oven for 40 minutes to bake at a temperature of 200 degrees.
It remains to find out what to serve with stuffed peppers. The side dish, the photo of which is presented above, involves the use of such ingredients for its preparation:
- thinly sliced leek (4 pcs.);
- raisins (½ cup);
- vegetable broth (¼ cup);
- salt and pepper to taste.
To prepare a side dish, you need to stew in a frying pan in a vegetable broth leeks and raisins, adding salt and pepper to taste. When the onion becomes soft, and the liquid is absorbed, the dish can be removed from the heat and put on a plate of stuffed pepper.
Garnish "Salad Mix"
Mashed potatoes or peas with butter, rice or any other cereal as a side dish are ideal. But what about those who are trying to minimize the number of calories in the finished dish? How to serve stuffed peppers to those who follow a strict diet?
The ideal option in this case is a side dish in the form of a mixture of salad leaves and vegetables, which are sold already washed and dried in special packages called “Salad Mix”. One such bag may contain arugula and chard, Chinese cabbage and spinach, Iceberg lettuce, radish and carrot slices, white cabbage with carrots and celery, etc. The idea of this mix is to pour the contents of the bag into a bowl, season it its butter, and the salad is ready. It can be served as a side dish to any dish, including stuffed peppers.
Stuffed Pepper Salad
A light salad of fresh vegetables, with juicy onions, seasoned with vegetable oil, will not leave anyone indifferent. With what side dish to serve stuffed peppers, if it is summer outside, is not even discussed. A low-calorie salad of cucumbers and tomatoes will harmoniously complement the taste of the main dish, while it practically does not add calories to it. Preparing such a side dish is easy.
First you need to wash and chop in a random order cucumbers and tomatoes. Then add onions in half rings, bell pepper and other vegetables that are to your taste. As a dressing, you can use any vegetable oil, for example sunflower, linseed or olive. For spicy acidity, you need to sprinkle the salad with lemon juice, and sprinkle it with greens for an effective serving. Garnish served on the same plate with stuffed peppers. And so that the gravy does not mix with vegetables, it is not worth watering pepper when serving.
Gourmet Baked Pumpkin Garnish
Traditional side dishes to stuffed peppers in the form of mashed potatoes, rice or buckwheat bother very quickly. Over time, I want to try to cook something new and interesting. A delicious alternative to bored side dishes can be a pumpkin baked with herbs, spices and olive oil. It turns out so tasty that the question of how to serve stuffed peppers to the festive table does not exist on its own.
To prepare a side dish according to this recipe, you need a pear-shaped nutmeg pumpkin , or rather that part of the fruit where there are no seeds. It must be washed well and peeled with a peeler. Then the pumpkin is cut into small cubes (approximately 2 cm thick). Then they must be put in a baking dish in one layer and mixed with spices.
The number of spices with which the pumpkin is baked can be adjusted to your liking. It is mandatory to add garlic squeezed through a press (4 cloves), red and black pepper, salt, rosemary, a little olive oil. After this, the form must be shaken well, and grate nutmeg on top. Pumpkin is baked in the oven at a temperature of 200 degrees 30 minutes. During cooking, the dish must be mixed so that the vegetable cubes are baked evenly. Put the finished pumpkin on a plate of stuffed pepper. If desired, garnish can be decorated with green onions and grated parmesan on top. From this, the taste of the dish only benefits.
String Beans in Tomato Sauce Garnished
Fresh or cooked vegetables are the most common side dish for stuffed peppers. They complement the taste of the finished dish, make it more harmonious and interesting. Along with traditional salad leaves, cucumbers and tomatoes, you can cook green beans as a side dish. This will not only diversify the taste of the dish, but also serve beautifully stuffed peppers.
To prepare a side dish, bean pods must be boiled until half cooked. To do this, cut off their ends, and throw prepared pods for no more than 4 minutes into a pot with boiling salted water. Discard the prepared green beans in a colander and cool.
Meanwhile, fry in olive oil several garlic cloves crushed by the flat side of the knife. After a couple of minutes, remove the garlic, while adding green beans and chopped cherry tomatoes to the pan. You can use ordinary tomatoes. However, they will have to be blanched in advance, the peel removed, and only then cut into cubes. String beans are cooked in tomato for about 5 minutes, after which they are laid out on a plate of stuffed pepper. Such a side dish can be served hot and cold.
Everyone chooses the perfect side dish for stuffed peppers for themselves. Someone more like fresh vegetable salads or traditional mashed potatoes, and someone prefers to serve the dish separately from the side dish. The taste of stuffed pepper from this will not get worse or better, only its presentation will change.