Stuffed Peppers

Just when you thought I was all about baking, eh?

I actually cook 99% of the meals here at home and we rarely eat dinner out or get take out, so I have lots of recipes to share! A lot of them are formulated on the fly and don't always involve the ingredients I intended when I start cooking them. This stuffed peppers recipe is one of them. They were predicting a blizzard the day after Christmas and of course this landed on my grocery shopping day. We got there early enough, but in true New England pre-storm fashion, the store was picked clean and I had to grab what was available and make due.

I was planning on making this with ground beef and rice like a stuffed pepper should be, but this wasn't meant to be. Not a scrap of ground beef left on the shelves I had to settle for ground turkey, which I am not adverse to using in lots of recipes as a substitute, so that was okay, but I forgot to buy rice! Of all things to forget! I'm usually so good about picking up staple pantry items when I know I'm out of them. Oh well, let's see what I do have on hand as a filler substitute.....Hmmm...I have half a package of herb stuffing bread cubes.......Turkey and stuffing? Hey! I think that could work! It did work, deliciously as a matter of fact!

Here's the recipe:

4-6 bell peppers (tops cut off and seeds removed)
1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
1 chopped sweet onion
14 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups herb stuffing bread cubes
6 Tbs ketchup, divided
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine turkey, onion, stuffing bread cubes, 4Tbs ketchup, salt, pepper and 3/4 tsp of the oregano.
Stuff this mixture into the bell peppers and set in a baking dish.



Mix the diced tomatoes with the remaining ketchup and oregano.
Pour tomato mixture over the stuffed peppers.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours or the meat is cooked through.



I am usually disappointed in turkey meat loaf type dishes because they can turn out dry, but baking them in the peppers covered in the tomato sauce kept the meat nice and moist. I really enjoyed it and hope you will too!

Christina

Ground Turkey- لحم الديك الرومي المفروم