Stuffed Pepper Subterfuge

Remember when you were younger and your parents used to trick you into eating food you didn’t like? You know the drill – telling you food was something it wasn’t, hiding peas in just about anything. I recall my parents conning me into giving lobster a try by convincing young Missy it was actually “lobster chicken.” Their trickery, however, backfired when I instantly became a shellfish addict, eager to forsake the nice, affordable kids’ menu for snow crab and shrimp at the age of about five…

I’m not above using culinary deception on myself. As a silly, naïve teenager, I went through an anti-green pepper phase. I loved the filling of stuffed peppers, but always left the vegetable shell on my plate. To remedy this, I decided to try baking the dish like a casserole, chopping up the peppers into little pieces and throwing them in the mix. Somehow, the tiny, diced pieces of green were easier to take than the monstrous whole pepper. A new dish was born: Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers.

Nowadays, I’ve grown to love green peppers, but I still prefer the dish prepared in my wacky way. An older and wiser cook, I’ve also lightened the recipe to use ground turkey instead of ground beef, and brown rice instead of white (either way tastes great). I’ve tried the recipe with red peppers instead of green, to appease a friend whose dislike of green peppers pervades no matter how tiny the pieces—the result is sweeter, but still tasty. Here’s my recipe for Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers.

½ red onion, minced
1 cup mushrooms, chopped
2 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 can tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 package ground turkey
2 large green peppers, diced
2 cups cooked brown rice
olive oil.
Salt, pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375.

Heat skillet. Sautee onion and garlic together until onion is tender. Add ground turkey (seasoned with salt and pepper) and mushrooms to the pan, and cook until ground meat is browned. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer.

Dump contents of skillet into large casserole dish. Bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve in bowls with garlic bread on the side.