If you are health conscious or just love to eat vegetables, you would surely love eating stuffed peppers. Stuffed peppers are a dish that is known all over the world and they come in different versions.
In Mexico, stuffed peppers are called Chile relleno that uses chili pepper. It is stuffed with cheese and meat and the pepper is covered in egg batter and then fried. When it is served, it may come with rice on the dish or in a taco and has rice, salsa as well as other toppings. Romania has the Ardei umpluti as their version and, of course, it uses bell peppers. Just the same, it is stuffed with ground meat, vegetables, rice and spices. It is then boiled in a mixture of cream, tomatoes and other spices.
However, you do not have to make it too hard on yourself about deciding on how to make your stuffed peppers. You also do not have to spend too much time on looking for stuffing because you can prepare the most basic of all.
The first thing you will have to prepare when making stuffed peppers are, naturally, the peppers. The best ones you can use are those that have a flat base so that it can stand on your dish. Blanching the peppers for five minutes in boiling water is recommended so that it does not take too much time for you to bake. When it is done, you can run it under cool water and then remove the stalk ends, as well as the seeds and the white pith.
You can place in chopped herbs inside your stuffed peppers later on. The choice of herbs depends upon you – mint, basil, thyme and the likes would still work well with the recipe. You can also place in rice or breadcrumbs into your stuffed peppers as well as finely chopped onions softened in olive oil. Before putting on the cover of your peppers, you can sprinkle some grated parmesan cheese over them and then place them on an oven safe dish.
Be sure to put in a little water on the base of your peppers as well as a few drops of oil before you place them inside the oven. Set the timer to 25 minutes although you can already take them out when the peppers are already brown. Placing in some tomato sauce around the peppers may be done 10 or 15 minutes before baking time is over.
For most American versions of the stuffed peppers, meat, usually beef, egg and spices like parsley and paprika are often added inside the peppers. Of course, choosing what to add inside your stuffed peppers will solely depend upon you. The recipe above is recommended for vegetarians and those who would like to do away with meat. Your kids may enjoy the peppers more if meat was present inside. See, it does not take so much time to prepare stuffed peppers and you also stay healthy, too.