From the Archives: Stuffed Green Bell Peppers

This is one of Scott's favorites.  I came up with this after looking through several recipes. 

Stuffed Green Peppers:
1-1 1/2lbs 93/7 ground beef
Enough green peppers for everyone to have at least 1 serving (more if you want)
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
1 box Zatarain's Dirty Rice mixture
1 package of shredded cheese (doesn't matter what kind)

Directions:
Brown ground beef in a large skillet. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. After browned, drain the meat and return to pan. Make the Dirty Rice according to the box's directions in the same skillet with the meat. Meanwhile, cut off the tops of the green peppers and pull out the inside and seeds. Layer rice mixture, cheese and spaghetti sauce in the peppers. Bake for 40-45 minutes until the peppers start to brown a bit.

Modifications:

-I like to use spaghetti sauce instead of tomato sauce because spaghetti sauce has all of the extra herbs added to it.
-Today I used mozzarella cheese that I had left over but a lot of times I will just use whatever shredded cheese that I have in the fridge, i.e. Colby Jack, Cheddar, etc.
-A lot of people will season white rice or long grain brown rice with whatever seasoning that they like but I really love the flavor of the dirty rice so I always use this.

Here's what you'll need:

Brown the ground beef.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

While the beef is browning, cut off the tops of the green peppers and take out the inside and the seeds.

Drain the beef.

Following the directions on the Zatarain's Dirty Rice box, I added 2 1/2 cups of water to the ground beef.

Add the rice mix.

Let it start to boil.

Cover it for 20-25 minutes.

Put a little cheese in the bottom of the green peppers.

Add the rice mix.

Put in some spaghetti sauce.

Just keep layering.

Pop in the oven for 40-45 minutes.

Once they are brown, pull them out.

Here's what you'll end up with:

Our Thoughts:
Like I said earlier, this is one of Scott's all-time favorite meals. I actually did it a little different this time. Everytime before I always boiled the peppers and then pulled them out, drained them and stuffed them. This time, though, I just placed all of the rice, cheese and sauce mixture in the raw green pepper and then baked it for 40-45 minutes. Before I never really ate the pepper because it was always kind of soggy but by baking it, the pepper still had that crunchy texture that makes green peppers so good.

Hope you enjoy!
April