If you have extra green peppers and would like to preserve some for a few winter meals, consider making some stuffed green peppers to freeze. The recipe I use is straight out of Rodale’s Stocking Up III book. The stuffed green peppers hold up very well in the freezer, provided they are wrapped well. I freeze the stuffed peppers on cookie sheets until frozen, then wrap two frozen peppers together in aluminum foil. When we want a quick meal, we take them out of the foil, place them on a baking dish, use the foil as a cover to cook with and bake them for an hour. Home-made fast-food!
This year, I thought I would make vegetarian-stuffed green peppers, a variation from the below recipe. I will substitute several vegetables and herbs for the ground meat. To switch out the 2 pounds of meat in this recipe, I will need to substitute enough vegetables so that the recipe makes the bulk required to stuff all of those peppers. A pound of cooked ground beef or sausage yields about 2 cups, so if you want to use the recipe as a guide and make vegetarian stuffing, eliminate the 2 pounds of ground meats and substitute with approximately 4 cups of vegetables.
Also, this recipe can easily be divided in half or in fourths, depending upon your pepper harvest. Last year we had such a large bumper crop of sweet green peppers that I made this recipe two times for winter eating. This meal is a nice freezer-to-oven-to-table fast food that comes in so handy at times.
Stuffed Green Peppers
- 24 large green peppers
- 2 cups minced onions
- 1 pound mushrooms, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1 pound pork sausage
- 1 pound ground beef
- 6 cups cooked brown rice
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Cut off tops of green peppers, and remove seeds and membranes. Blanch peppers for 5 minutes.
Saute onions, mushrooms, and garlic in butter until soft.
Brown sausage and beef in a separate skillet. Drain off excess fat. Add sausage-beef mixture, rice, eggs, and cheese to the sauteed vegetables. Combine. Stuff peppers.
To freeze, set peppers on a tray in the freezer. When completely frozen, wrap individually or in family-size portions in plastic bags or heavy-duty foil.
When ready to serve, preheat oven to 375-degrees F. Place peppers upright in a covered casserole dish. Bake, covered, for approximately 1 hour.
Note: I add cheddar cheese or tomato sauce toppings after 30 minutes of cooking, then replace the foil covering to finish baking.
Yield: 24 stuffed peppers
