Stuffed Green Peppers

~Hilda Joy
If you grow some of your vegetables, you may have a wealth of peppers in August.  If not, the local farmers markets have them.  These crisp green goblets are perfect vessels for holding food.  I have eaten this dish in the homes of friends but always like this recipe best.  Mostly, this is my Mother’s recipe but with added flavor in the sauce.  This generous recipe is a bit time-consuming to make but is worth the effort as it can feed a family or be frozen in batches for one or two people to enjoy at a later date when there is no time to cook but one wants a nourishing hot meal.  Simply defrost and reheat.
 
After getting married, I became serious about learning to cook well and had an appreciative audience of one.  My husband was not hesitant to praise or to make suggestions.  He had a good palate, and his critiques were fair and therefore welcome.
 
The first few times I made stuffed green peppers, I used a lot of pots.  Not so anymore.  One large stockpot is used for parboiling, making the sauce, and steaming.  This is a dish to be made when one is feeling loving and calm and not rushed.  It’s like therapy.
 
Some cooks sauté the ground meat for the stuffing, but it is more tender if used raw (also saves time).  It steams for an hour or so bathed in a tomato sauce.  Some cooks bake rather than steam stuffed green peppers, and this results in a thick goopy sauce, which I find distasteful.  The peppers need to be parboiled for a very short time to soften them, but they should not be mushy.  Goopy and mushy are each a no-no.
 
The sweet-sour tomato sauce is a variation on the Austrian Paradeis sauce.  When I read that a Czech-born opera singer said she added lemon zest and cinnamon to her Paradeis sauce, I did the same, and my brother proclaimed that my stuffed green peppers, especially the sauce, were even better than our Mom’s.  High praise indeed.
 
The shrimp variation resulted from seeing a heap of multi-colored peppers at a market.

EnJoy

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This recipe may be a bit of work but is worth it.  Steaming—rather than baking—this dish creates a delectable, non-goopy sauce, which often occurs in baked sauce.  The addition of lemon zest and cinnamon to the sauce adds a mid-Eastern touch to this satisfying dish.

​1 cup long-grain rice
2 cups water

​Cook rice with water.  Set aside.

​7 to 9 green peppers
   all the same size and that
   will sit without tipping over
   in a large pot
 
   (also, peppers should not be
   too thick-skinned)

​After washing peppers, slice off tops; discard stems.  Dice remainder of tops; set them aside in a small bowl.  Using a soup spoon, scoop out and discard seeds/ribs.  Rinse out peppers.  In the very large pot that will be used to steam the peppers in their sauce, parboil the peppers for a few minutes to soften them.  Remove peppers to a rack, turning them upside down to drain.

​1 large onion, diced
butter/salt/pepper

​Sauté onion in butter until transparent.  Season with salt and pepper.

​1 pound lean ground beef
salt/pepper/allspice

​To RAW ground beef, add sautéed onion, RAW diced peppers, and COOKED rice.  Season mixture with salt/pepper/allspice.  (DO NOT SAUTE THE BEEF!)

​option:  1 egg

An egg, of course, would keep the mixture together, but, as this filling will be imprisoned in the peppers, it’s not going anywhere—so an egg is not really necessary. 

Stuff peppers with ground-beef mixture.  Set aside while making sauce in the large pot that was used for parboiling and will be used to steam the peppers.

​4 ounces butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup flour (4 ounces)

​Melt butter.  Add flour to make a roux and cook mixture, stirring constantly, until roux is light brown.

​2 cans tomato sauce,
   28-ounce
1 can tomato paste,
   6-ounce

​Add tomato sauce and paste to cooked roux.  Rinse cans slightly with water.  Add water to pot.  Stir until tomato sauce and paste are thoroughly incorporated into the roux.  If sauce is too thick, add more water.

salt
apple cider vinegar
brown sugar/white sugar

​Now comes the tricky part.  After salting sauce to taste, alternately add a little vinegar/little of both sugars to tomato sauce until the sweet-sour taste appeals to you.

​zest of 1 lemon/cinnamon

Enliven sauce to taste with lemon zest and cinnamon. 

When sauce is pleasing to your taste, carefully place stuffed green peppers into the hot tomato sauce.  Ladle sauce over each pepper.  Cover pot with a tight lid and steam peppers in sauce on very low heat for one hour.

​cooked/drained small pasta,
   preferably little shells,
   to catch/hold tomato sauce

Serve steamed peppers and sauce over hot pasta.

VARIATION:  Substitute 1 pound chopped shrimp (cooked, peeled, deveined, de-tailed) for the ground beef.  Instead of using green peppers, stuff a mix of red, yellow, and orange peppers with the shrimp/rice mixture.  The multi-colored diced peppers from the tops create a confetti look in the filling.

EnJoy