Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies!

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Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies!

A quick and easy 30 minute weeknight meal idea! Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies! Parents will love it's packed full of hidden vegetables and kids will love the taste!

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and tried a dish that was so delicious you immediately needed to try making it at home? Something similar happened to me last week. Let me give you the long version. 😉 My dear, sweet, sister gave birth to her first child last Friday! A beautiful, sweet, little cherub of a child who immediately made me fall head over heels in love with him. This little boy made me an aunt, my husband an uncle and my kiddos cousins… something that the four of us have been anticipating for a long time. We couldn’t be more thrilled. I was there for the birth (we have LONG births in my family and I was so incredibly proud of how strong and brave my sister was. She’s a birth warrior.), and then I stayed for the weekend to help my sister and her husband get into the swing of things with the new baby. 

My sister is a planner and is so organized (I wish that I had gotten more of those genes). When it came time to think about Sunday supper she told me that she had pre-made stuffed red peppers, and froze them for easy dinners when the baby was born. (See! Isn’t she amazing! I had planned on running out and getting supplies to make her dinner and instead she had dinner all ready for me!) 

We popped a few of the stuffed peppers out of the freezer to thaw, and come dinner time we threw them in the oven. By the time they were ready to eat, the entire house smelled like a gourmet Italian restaurant! When I took my first bite and they tasted even better than they smelled!

Which brings me back to my first sentence– Have you ever gone to a restaurant and tried a dish that was so delicious you immediately needed to try making it at home?

Well I wasn’t at a restaurant, but my sister’s peppers were definitely restaurant worthy, so I decided to recreate them. 

We’re notorious in my family for not using recipes and making things up as we go along (which I’m guessing my sister did for her peppers), and I didn’t want to bug her for the recipe while she’s in the first week after giving birth, so I decided to recreate them on my own!

One of the things that I love the most about these peppers is that they are SO quick and easy to make AND you can sneak a lot of hidden veggies into them. 

I used Minute Rice® Whole Grain Brown Rice for this recipe. The difference between Minute Rice® and regular rice is that Minute Rice® is pre-cooked and then dried so that it cooks up faster. I love feeding my kids brown rice because it has more fibre, protein and nutrients than white rice, but regular brown rice can take a long time to cook! Minute Rice® Whole Grain Brown Rice takes 10 minutes to make and has no extra additives. If you look at the ingredient list on the box, all you’ll see is Whole Grain Brown Rice!  This recipe takes approximately 10 minutes of active cooking time and can be on the table in just over 30 minutes making this a #WeekdayWin! 

I hope you love these peppers as much as I do. One pepper did a good job of filling up our tummies, so if you are a family of four, you may want to consider eating 4 peppers fresh and freezing the remaining 4!

Read on for my Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies!

Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies!

A quick and easy 30 minute weeknight meal idea! Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies! Parents will love it's packed full of hidden vegetables and kids will love the taste!

Ingredients:

-1 1/3 cups of Minute Rice® Whole Grain Brown Rice (Cook per instructions on box)

-8 medium bell peppers

-1 carrot 

-1/4 yellow onion

-1/2 small to medium zucchini

-2 cloves garlic

-1 pound ground beef

-4 cups tomato sauce (2 cups for rice mixture, 2 cups for bottom of baking dish)

-1 tablespoon dried basil

-3 cups grated cheddar cheese (2 cups for rice mixture, 1 cup for sprinkling on top)

-Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Step 1: Cook brown Minute Rice as per instructions on box.

Step 2: Preheat Oven to 400F.

Step 3: Slice the tops off of your red pepper. Remove core and seeds from the pepper. Take the stem out of the top of the pepper and set the edible part aside. 

Step 4: In a food processor, pulse carrot, onion, zucchini, garlic and edible parts from the lids of the pepper until finely minced.

Step 5: Over medium high heat brown your ground beef. Season with salt, pepper and dried basil.  

Step 6: Once ground beef is cooked, reduce heat to low and add vegetable mixture, brown rice, 2 cups of tomato sauce and 2 cups of cheddar cheese. Fold until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Taste to see if any additional seasoning is needed. 

Step 7: Spoon rice mixture into pepper cups, pushing rice down so it’s packed in. If you are freezing your peppers, wrap them in saran wrap and tin foil then put in a ziplock bag and freeze. If you are eating fresh continue to step 8. 

Step 8: Pour remaining 2 cups of tomato sauce into a baking dish. Set peppers on top of sauce. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, top with remaining 1 cup of cheese then heat for another 5-10 minutes until cheese in bubbling. 

Serve and enjoy!

One pepper per person did a nice job filling up our bellies, especially if serving it with a side salad. 

A quick and easy 30 minute weeknight meal idea! Italian Stuffed Bell Peppers Recipe with Rice, Ground Beef and Veggies! Parents will love it's packed full of hidden vegetables and kids will love the taste! 

Tell me… What are your favorite freezer meals? Do you have any meals that a friend or family member has made that you want to recreate at home? What’s your favorite 30 minute meal?

Disclosure: Thank you to Minute Rice® for working with us on this recipe. As with all articles on Hello Creative Family, all thoughts and opinions are 100% our own! 

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5 Comments

  1. I love stuffed peppers but will have to try them this way next time!
    Thanks for sharing with us at this week’s Merry Monday link party!
    We hope to see you again next week!
    Kate | TheOrganizedDream.com

  2. These look amazing. I plan to try them this week. ?

  3. A comforting quick meal. I never thought about freezing them.

  4. craftyone says:

    I probably will be trying this recipe this holiday season; it looks pretty tasty.