Stuffed Bell Pepper Casserole

I’m really trying to stick to some fairly healthy eating. I swear. I know that my posts kind of swing wildly between the ends of the spectrum, but that’s because… well… so do my meals.

Today, for instance, we’re working on a really nice, summery casserole. For me, casseroles (or – if I were a true Minnesotan – “hotdishes”) are typically a heavy winter food. Lots of cream of something soup, cheese, and potatoes.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love that kind of thing. But not when the weather is warm and humid and all you really want it to cook something that doesn’t make you feel like you can’t fit into your shorts.

Rice, peppers, meat, melty cheese. How could this go wrong?

So, today, I offer you Stuffed Bell Pepper Casserole. (The recipe actually comes from this site – where you can even print it out and all that – or you can just follow along and see where the blog post takes you.)

How about a video intro?

Now, come on. How great do these ingredients look? Multi-color peppers, white rice, ground turkey – and cheese. You know we can’t go wrong at this point, right?

First step (and, really, the only step in the prep) – chopping things up.

I will never win an award for my knife skills. I watch all of those cooking shows where people are getting lectured about how bad their skills are, and I think “I haven’t lost any fingers, yet, I must be doing okay.” But, that said, here’s a quick trick for dicing an onion:

1) Cut it in half, from top to bottom
2) Lay it flat and cut off the top (if you keep the root end intact, it will help hold it all together)
3) Cut “stripes” into it vertically (from the top to the bottom toward the cutting board)
4) Cut back across it horizontally (with your knife parallel to the cutting board)

You can see the cross-hatch cuts if you look closely in this picture:

5) Cut across the original stripes from side to side toward the cutting board
6) You’ve got a fully diced onion!

By the way – have you ever heard about how much produce American grocery stores throw out because it’s not “perfect” – and so people won’t buy it? This includes things like bruised apples or dented tomatoes or – in this case – slightly wrinkled bell peppers.

Personally, unless I’m going to be making a presentation out of what I’m buying, I tend to not worry about that. And I’m sure that if I really wanted I might be able to bargain down some prices because I’m buying “damaged” goods – but I’m horrible at haggling (even in countries where you’re supposed to), so I just pay and go.

When you get to the peppers, you’ll need to cut them open and take out all of the seeds before dicing them. (I tend to make the initial half-cut, and then just pull the pepper open with my hands and scoop everything out.)

I love a good Santoku/Japanese Chef's knife!

Oh. Sorry. I forgot to include garlic in the initial photo. That’s because ours comes from a squeeze container instead of from a fresh bulb.

This is one of those shortcuts that just makes sense for us. We don’t cook with enough garlic to keep a bulb from shooting out sprouts before we use it all. So this is a little more expensive – but much more practical.

Before we launch into the cooking, I should mention that I doubled the recipe. I had looked at the photo with the online recipe and decided that it didn’t look like it was enough food to fill a 9x13 pan, and since so many of the ingredients are things like “a can of…” it seemed better to just double it instead of trying to do one-and-a-half of everything.

Into the pan go 2 pounds of ground turkey (or very lean ground beef), the chopped onion half, and about 4 cloves of garlic.

If you work it with a spatula while it cooks, it’ll break down into nice chunks by the time it’s done.

Just before the onions are completely soft, you toss in the bell peppers, salt, and pepper.

I obviously got over-excited and forgot to take these photos as squares.

Stirring them together was the moment where I began to think “I’m going to need a bigger pan.” (cue music from Jaws)

I split this out between my 4-quart sauté pan and a deeper 4-quart “everyday” pot, and took over the top of the stove.

Next up – one can of diced tomatoes (not drained) per pan, plus one small can of tomato sauce per pan, plus some herbs – I went with oregano and basil, since it was feeling kind of Italian at this point. (With the turkey, I also could have easily gone for sage or rosemary.)

I have to admit: At this point I was thinking I should just add beans and call it chili.

Then each pan got 2 cups of chicken stock and I waited until they each came to a boil.

And then added in 1 cup of Basmati rice per pan and stirred it all together.

When I put the lids on, I have to admit that I wasn’t sure what was going to happen over the next 25 minutes. It was pretty much soup with crunchy rice at this point, after all.

But, when the lids came off... well… it looked like a bunch of peppers and tomatoes had been made into stew.

But... geez... is that gorgeous or what?

Until I stirred it and all of the rice appeared.

About 2/3 of this went into a 9x13 pan, and was topped with some cheddar cheese.

That left about 1/3 of it in the other pan on the stove.

Which went into another casserole dish and was also topped with cheese.

Technically, at this point we were done. And had in front of us a nice, filling, yet not overly heavy dish.

But, to make this a true casserole, I do believe it has to be baked off. So I put the back-up pan into the fridge for a couple of days and then did just that.

Don't worry - I was taking out of the oven just as I took this, so it was okay to have the oven door open.

By the time it came out of the oven, it had all melded together. The rice was a perfect texture, the cheese was all melty. I was ready to go.

As I mention in the video, this would be great with almost any other spice palate (palette? pallet?) thrown in. To take it more to the Italian side, I could have topped it with mozzarella and bread crumbs. A spicy Mexican take on it – with some hot sauce, and some sliced jalapeños and cilantro would be great. Or maybe Indian, with some warm curry spices and ground lamb instead of turkey. As long as the liquid content stays consistent (to cook the rice), this could become a really decent blank canvas.

I feel I should point out that – if you’re planning to bake it later – you should really only about half-cook the peppers. They were still crunchy the first time I bit into this (in the video), but by the time I was eating the leftover leftovers they had gotten pretty soft and bland.

Overall, though, I’m looking forward to trying this out again – especially since I know that it does well in the fridge!

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Have any thoughts on which version of palette/palate/pallet is correct in this post? Let me know your opinions - you know I'm as interested in words as I am in food! (Well... almost.)