Stuffed Bell Peppers

Last weekend we went grocery shopping and ended up with 24 red bell peppers, they were and good price and we LOVE bell peppers. Anyway we have been coming up with different ways to cook them, the hubs grilled some over the weekend, and we had some with a veggie tray and ranch. Last night I was trying to come up with a dinner idea when my eyes rested on the box of bell peppers. When I lived in Twin Falls one of my roommates use to always bring back stuffed bell peppers whenever she visited her family and man were they good!! Her mom use to make up and extra batch just for us to freeze and eat on the go it was awesome! So I decided that's what I wanted to make for dinner, I scoured all my cookbooks and not one had a recipe for stuffed bell peppers so I did the next best thing and asked my FB friends for recipes, all the way searching on pinterest for recipes as well. Now I learned that traditional stuffed peppers are basically meatloaf in a pepper, now my family likes meat loaf ok but it's not a favorite so I kept looking for recipes, I finally decided on this one Santa Fe Stuffed Peppers

Don't they look yummy? I found a few other recipes that I figure I might try later in the week but last night I knew I wanted to try my hand at these. 

Ok so I thought I had everything I needed for these but come to find out I didn't have the black beans, jalapenos, chicken broth, cilantro and we aren't huge fans of ground turkey meat. So I used her recipe as a base and kinda went from there with stuff I had on hand, here's my version:

For the Filling;

1 lb ground beef

1 15 oz can of ranch style beans

Homemade taco seasoning

1  14 oz can tomatoes drained and rinsed

3/4 cup frozen corn or fresh( I only had fresh corn so that's what I went with)

5 bell peppers cut in half lengthwise, seeded and cleaned (I used red you can use whatever you want)

1/3 cup water

Cheese of your choice I used pepper jack for some and a pizza blend for some

Here's my Taco seasoning recipe;

2 tsp dried onion

1 tsp salt

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp. cornstarch

1/2 tsp. crushed dried red pepper

1/2 tsp. minced garlic (you can use fresh I use dehydrated garlic)

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp. ground cumin (optional)

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl. This makes 2 TBS of taco mix which is equivalent to one package of the store bought stuff.

You can double or triple the recipe and store in an airtight container and have it on hand when ya need it. 

Ok so the first thing I did whas cut and clean my peppers, then I put them in a baking dish cut side up with the 1/3 cup of water in the bottom of the dish.

Next I browned my ground beef, once browned I added the beans, tomatoes, corn, and taco seasoning mix and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Then I stuffed the peppers covered the dish with aluminum foil (or lid if your dish has one) and baked them at 350 for 45 mins, once done I added the cheese for the pepper jack I put one slice per pepper for the shredded I just sprinkled it on, I put them back in the oven but turned off the heat and just left them in till the cheese had melted. 

Here's my end result: (these ones have the pepper jack cheese on them)

They were a big hit with everyone except Kaleb (no big surprise there!). Ryne kept going on and on about how great they were, Ellie ate all the cheese first, then the meat and lastly the corn she didn't eat much of the pepper but that was fine by me. The hubs really liked them too. They didn't take long to prepare and the cooking time allowed us to get all the chores and kitchen clean, so once dinner was over we had lot's of time to relax!

Hope ya enjoy, we sure did!