Loaded Stuffed Bell Peppers

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These truly are some loaded stuffed peppers.

Loaded.

With.

Deliciousness.

Now if you’re looking for some super healthy and lean recipe, you should keep on moving.

But if you’re looking for a healthy-ish recipe that will smack your taste buds, keep on reading…

This recipe will make at least six large stuffed peppers. I just made four though. I think I’m gonna freeze the leftover filling for some bangin burritos later this week!

Start out by hooking up a few slices of some smoked pork jowl. It’s similar to bacon, but cut from the cheeks instead of the belly. It is amazing.

You can also use bacon if you have to 🙁

Preheat your cast iron skillet over medium heat and add a touch of olive oil in there. When it’s nice and hot add your diced pork jowl (about 3 ounces). Lower the heat to medium low while you cook it because otherwise it will pop like crazy. Pork jowl has thicker chunks of fat in it.

When it’s nice and browned let it drip on some paper towels.

Now we can hook up the Spanish rice. Here is a detailed post on that already.

This will make you one cup of rice which is perfect. I would under cook this rice by maybe 5 minutes though, and strain it. It is gonna finish cooking in the oven inside the peppers.

Go ahead and dice up about 4 ounces of white mushrooms.

In a large mixing bowl combine the mushrooms, diced pork jowl, 1 pound of uncooked ground beef, and 2 tbsp of worshushshushshire.. I mean Worcestershire sauce. Mix and mush it all together until blended evenly.

Next add in 1 can of lightly drained Rotel, and the undercooked Spanish rice. I used a fork to mix it all together at this stage. Now shred in about 2 ounces of cheddar and 2 ounces of pepper jack cheese. Again, use the fork to get it all mixed evenly.

While everything is getting close to being wrapped up, go ahead and preheat your skillet in the oven to 350° and let’s get the tops off these peppers.

The easiest way is to lay them on their sides and with a very sharp knife, slice the tops off. If you don’t use a sharp knife, you run the risk of either cutting off your fingers when the dull knife slides across the side of the pepper. Or you may crush and crack the side wall of your pepper, rendering them useless.

So a sharp knife in the kitchen is always a necessity. I use a Morakniv, They’re made in Sweden, and are of amazing quality! Idk how they even sell them as cheap as they do. I’ve given it a beating outdoors, but it serves me better in the kitchen.

So when you slice in, only go deep enough to get through the shell, then cut around the pepper. This will avoid having to clean out a bunch of seeds. Then give it a little twist and jerk, the top should come right off.

Go ahead and fill those to the top with your filling mixture. Pack everything in there nice and tight, and transfer them into your skillet. Top them off with a little more of the cheeses.

Now pop them into your 350° degree oven for about 45 minutes.

The best part about these is the nice crispy cheese cap that bakes on top of these. It helps seal everything up while it cooks, plus it’s crispy cheese.

When I serve these, I like to carefully slice them in half and then top with a little more cheese, and some cracked black pepper.

Enjoy!!!