To the question "do you like stuffed peppers", many will answer in the affirmative. But there are those who simply do not digest this dish. Why? Very often it was cooked (or rather, spoiled) in school canteens in order to develop a person's stable idiosyncrasy to him. After all, if you pour peppers over a jail called carrot sauce and simmer them for hours on low heat, then the dish is unlikely to cause someone's appetite. But in this article we will tell you how to cook stuffed peppers in the oven. Photos of this bright dish are so beautiful that there is no doubt - it is quite appropriate on the festive table. In addition, it is very hearty and tasty. Do you know that peppers can be cooked with a variety of fillings? And even without rice at all? By the way, they can be cooked not in a pan on the stove, but in the oven! The recipes of stuffed peppers are so varied that there is simply no way to list them all, because we have chosen only the best for you. Read and implement them for your pleasure. And even if before you did not like stuffed peppers, we assure you: you will change your attitude towards it.
Product Tips
If you are going to fill the pods with rice, then you can take not only white varieties. With the same success, you can use wild, unpolished or brown. If you plan to stuff peppers whole, then choose medium-sized fruits so that they are baked. Many love the so-called "boats." In such halves of pepper, the filling goes more, with a "slide". In this case, you can take large pods. Peppers stuffed with rice are not cooked in the oven for long. Needless to say, for this dish they take pods not of chili or cayenne, but of sweet, Bulgarian, popularly called paprika. Color does not matter. But to get aesthetic pleasure from the dish, red and orange peppers should be preferred - in the baked form they look more elegant than green and white. It is also worth choosing pods of the same size so that they bake evenly and have a more even shape. Garnish for stuffed peppers is not required. This is a self-sufficient dish. If rice will be used in the filling, then it must first be boiled until half-cooked. It happens that the farm has frozen peppers. This simplifies the cook’s work. It is easier to stuff the filling into frozen pods.
A classic step-by-step recipe for stuffed peppers baked in the oven
Before we begin to bake all sorts of exotic variations stuffed with couscous, ricotta cheese and similar ingredients, let's master the old grandmother's method of cooking this dish.
So, the first step: cooking rice porridge. We’ll wash one hundred grams of cereal until the draining water becomes completely transparent. Pour boiling water at the rate of 1 to 2.5. That is, water needs two and a half times more than rice. Do not forget to salt it. When the water boils again, boil the cereal for exactly ten minutes. We strain the rice and let it dry a little on a sieve.
Now the second step: make minced meat (if you don’t have it ready). To do this, scroll through a meat grinder 200 grams of pork and 300 grams of beef. Mix raw minced meat with half-cooked rice. Salt the mass and season it with spices.
And now the third step, the most important. We need to wash one and a half kilograms of pods, carefully cut the stalk of each and carefully scrape off all the seeds with a knife. And you need to try so that the paprika does not crack, otherwise a delicious dish will not work, even if you strictly observe the recipe for stuffed peppers. In the oven, the filling can pour out.
Roasting
So, we have hollow pods and raw filling. How to cook stuffed peppers in the oven? Step-by-step instructions instruct you to carefully fill the pods with the filling. We stuff tightly so that there are no voids, but not so that the pepper cracked. We wash a kilogram of tomatoes and cut each vegetable into six parts (if the tomatoes are small, then it is enough to divide them into quarters). In a deep dish, with the holes facing up, place the peppers tightly. Between the pods we put slices of tomatoes. Dilute the tomato paste (50 grams) with water to the consistency of the sauce. Add a coffee spoon of ground paprika, five crumbled bay leaves, several peas of allspice. Pour our stuffed pepper with this sauce. In the oven (it should have already been warmed up to 180 degrees by that time), the dish should be stewed for about forty minutes.
Pepper Boats
The filling of this dish can be completely different. But in order to master the technique itself, let's start the pods with the classic minced meat: ground meat and rice. Add to these two ingredients: finely chopped dill and onion (the latter can even be a little sautéed), as well as grated carrots. “Boats” are nothing but halves of stuffed peppers. In the oven, they are baked in this way. We don’t need to worry that paprika will crack during seed extraction or filling rice with meat. I wash the pods and cut them in half along. We extract seeds and partitions without any labor. Dip in boiling water for a few seconds. We put the prepared stuffing in such “boats” with a spoon. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. We cover the baking sheet with cooking paper. On it we place the halves of peppers with the filling up. In a separate bowl, mix one hundred milliliters of sour cream with half the amount of tomato paste or ketchup. Pour the “boats” with the resulting sauce. We put the baking sheet in the oven and wait forty minutes.
Holiday Recipe for Stuffed Pepper Meat
In the oven, you can bake such dishes for guests. Now that we have learned how to cook the main course, let's move on to its variations. Boil 100 grams of rice until half-cooked, mince 350-400 g of pork through a meat grinder. To this classic set, add chopped onion and 200 grams of crushed cheese. Squeeze out two more cloves of garlic through a press. Optionally chopped greens can be added. Knead the filling and stuff the prepared pods with it. Chop two onions and fry in vegetable oil until golden brown. Add two tablespoons of tomato paste and simmer a little. Lubricate the resulting frying with a mold in which the stuffed rice will be baked in the oven. We lay the pods as densely as possible to each other. We put in the oven already preheated to 180 ° C. After twenty minutes, pull out the form and sprinkle the peppers with grated cheese (about a hundred grams of any hard variety). Return to the oven and bake another twenty minutes.
Peppers without rice
In the pods you can put other cereals, as well as bulgur or couscous. But in this holiday recipe porridge is not used at all. We will cook peppers stuffed with meat in the oven. First, remove the skin from the chicken breast, and cut the fillet (we need about half a kilo of it) into small pieces. A handful of walnut kernels will be calcined in a dry frying pan and coarsely detailed. Mix with raw chicken. Finely chop the onion, spassed it in a small amount of vegetable oil. Add to it in the pan grated carrots with large chips. When it becomes reddish, pour a quarter cup of sour cream. Add this roast to the chicken, squeeze a clove of garlic through a press, salt and pepper the minced meat. A kilogram of sweet bell pepper wash, each pod cut lengthwise into halves. Select all the seeds and partitions. Fill the resulting cups with minced meat. Set them with the filling up in the baking sheet covered with parchment. We put in the oven preheated to 190 degrees. After twenty minutes, sprinkle the peppers with grated cheese (120 grams). Continue to bake for another quarter hour.
Vegetarian peppers
In the previous recipe, we did without rice, and in this - without meat. To please vegetarians and those who fast, we will cook in the oven peppers stuffed only with rice and vegetables. We set to cook until half ready 150 grams of cereal. Properly cooked rice ceases to be hard, but edible it also can not yet be called. While the porridge is cooked, we will take care of the vegetables. We clean the eggplant and place it in highly salted water to leave the bitterness. Two onions finely chopped, rub the carrots with large chips. We pass these vegetables until golden brown. Cut the eggplant into small cubes, add to the pan to the onion with carrot. Scalp two tomatoes with boiling water, after which the peel will slide off very easily. We also cut the tomatoes as small as possible and add to the pan. We stew the vegetables until the juice launched by the tomatoes almost evaporates. It may take ten minutes. Knead vegetables with rice porridge. At a kilogram of sweet peppers, cut the stems, but do not throw them away. The inside of the pod is carefully cleaned from seeds. We start with minced meat. In a greased form with vegetable oil, we install peppers. We cover the holes with the stalks. Fill with a mixture of sour cream and tomato paste. We put in a hot oven and cook three quarters of an hour at 180 degrees.
Peppers with buckwheat and mushrooms
This dish can be made not only in winter, from frozen pods, but also from fresh paprika. First, boil until fully cooked 200 grams of buckwheat. Knead it with the same amount of any minced meat. We clean one hundred grams of ceps, fry them in butter. Add to buckwheat. We do the frying, as described in the above recipes, from two onions and carrots. Also add it to the filling. Three fine chips of three hundred grams of hard cheese. Half of this amount is sent to the filling. Add also chopped greens of dill (half the bunch will be enough). One and a half kilograms of my peppers, cut into halves, clean the seeds. We spread the filling with a slide in the "boat". Sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese. Peppers are laid tightly to each other on a baking sheet lined with culinary paper. Sent to a hot oven. Bake for half an hour at a temperature of 180 degrees. Stuffed peppers in the oven will be even tastier if you lubricate the inside and outside of it with vegetable oil and grill it. But here you must be careful. Pods or "boats" should only be covered with dark spots, and not baked until the shape is deformed and completely softened.
Chushka-burek
This Turkish and Bulgarian dish is an oven-baked pepper stuffed with feta cheese and fried in light breading from dough. Sounds appetizing? Let's cook the burek bite. Six large pods cut the stem and remove the seeds. Preheat the oven strongly (up to 220 degrees) and bake the pods for a quarter of an hour. It will be enough to wait for the moment when dark tan marks appear on the sides of the pods. We take them out of the oven and remove the peel. Now prepare the filling. Brynza (250 grams) knead with a handful of chopped parsley and dill. Add to this mass a raw egg. Knead everything. Very carefully fill the peppers with minced cheese. Break the egg into a bowl. Beat lightly with a pinch of salt and spices. Pour a little flour into another plate. Pods roll in the egg. Then - in flour. We spread vegetable oil in a pan heated and fry on both sides.
Very simple recipe
If you have little time, but still want to enjoy stuffed peppers, then use the following instructions. For the filling, we make the simplest paste for sandwiches: we grate finely (or squeeze through a press) the processed cheese. We mix garlic to it to taste - one or two cloves. It can be finely chopped or also passed through a press. We proceed further by inspiration. You can diversify the sandwich mass with chopped herbs, cut fresh tomatoes or hard-boiled eggs there. You can season the cheese with spices - ground sweet paprika, caraway seeds, nutmeg. My peppers, cut in half, extract the seeds with partitions. We lubricate these “boats” from the outside and from the inside with vegetable oil, slightly add to them. Stack the filling. Peppers are placed on a baking sheet or in a mold. Bake in the oven at 210 degrees for about half an hour.
Cold appetizer with ricotta and tuna
We are used to the fact that baked stuffed peppers with minced meat in the oven are served as the main main course. But some recipes recommend making them as a cold starter. We wash six peppers, cut the stem and gently remove the seeds. We clean the pods from the inside, put it on the grill and bake in a very hot oven (about 200 degrees) for a quarter of an hour. If the stove has an air grill mode, then use it. When the pepper is baked (it will have tan marks on its sides), we take it out of the oven, transfer it to the pan and cover it with a lid. Cooking the filling. Cut finely salted or pickled cucumber, chop dill greens. We express the canned tuna from the liquid and knead with a fork. Add 150 grams of ricotta or other cream cheese. All mix well. Our peppers should have cooled a little. Remove the skin from them. We start the pods (carefully, they are very fragile) with minced meat. Put in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Serve a snack by pouring sour cream or mayonnaise.
Now you have learned some recipes for stuffed peppers baked in the oven. But this is not a complete list. You can stuff pods not only with meat and cereals, but also with other ingredients - cheese, mushrooms, potatoes, vegetables. The “steak” in pepper with a quail egg inside will look very original. In a word, do not be afraid to show imagination and enjoy a variety of delicious dishes from baked paprika.