Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers. Not understuffed.

I wanted to share a delicious recipe with you today.

Unfortunately, I don't actually have a recipe for it. 

Therefore, this cannot technically be considered a recipe.  More of a freestyle-dinner, if you will.  An improv of ingredients.

The substitutions and combinations are truly endless, but ours turned out mighty fine, so I'll at least share a close guesstimate of how I went about it.

I need to be better at writing these things down.  I fail.

Shall we just move on? 

I think so too.

Stuffed Peppers - Elliott Homestead Style

You will need:
 - 3 tablespoons butter
 - 1 medium onion, diced
 - Couple large pinches of salt
 - 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
 - 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
 - 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
 *By all means, if you've got fresh herbs - use 'em!
 - 1 1/2 cup of brown rice, soaked for 24 hours (this helps break down phytates and speeds up cooking time!)
 - 3 cups of beef or chicken stock
 - 3 large bell peppers, halved and seeded
 - 2 carrots, diced
 - 2 stalks celery, diced
 - 2 cups of mushrooms, diced
 - Juice of half a lemon
 - Shredded Parmesan cheese, for topping

1.  Using you handy-dandy, but slightly crusty, cast-iron skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.  Once it's warm, add your onion.  Let it hang out in there, swimming in all that delicious butter, for a few minutes - until it's nice and soft.  Mmm.

2.  Once the onion is tender, add your spices (rosemary, thyme, oregano, salt). 

Then, pour in your rice that has been soaking, as well as your beef stock.  Stir, stir to get all those nice crusties off the bottom of the pan.



3.  Cover the skillet and let the rice simmer until tender.  Mine took about twenty minutes.  Taste it now - does it need more salt?  Don't hold out on it now - give it what it needs!  Nurture it like a little flower!

4.  After the rice is tender, gently fold in your carrots, celery, mushrooms, and lemon juice.  We don't want to do this too soon (who wants overly cooked vegetables!), but just enough so that they can mingle with the other ingredients.  Carrot, meet rice.  Celery, meet spices. 

5.  After the ingredients have had a few minutes to mingle, get your peppers lined up in a baking pan.  Then, carefully spoon the rice mixture into each open faced pepper.  Stuff 'em full.  Pile 'em up.  Really overdo it.  Who wants an understuffed stuffed pepper?  I'll tell you who.  No one.  That's who.

6.  Top the peppers off with some grated Parmesan cheese.  Just because it's good.  And sometimes, you just gotta live it up.

7.  Bake the peppers in a 350 degree oven for about an hour.  This will give the pepper a chance to get all nice and tender and soft and delicious.  Perfecto.

8.  Don't do, as a fool would do, and bite into this mountain of pepper pleasure without allowing proper cool-down time. 

Not that I would be foolish enough to bite into a steaming hot pepper without thinking of the logical consequences of such an act.  In fact, I just wanted to warn you out of sheer concern for your well being.

Isn't that nice of me?

That was a lie.  I totally bit into a steaming hot pepper and burnt my tongue.

But sometimes, when all that stands between your hungry belly and a plate of delicious mushroom & rice pilaf stuffed peppers, you just gotta take the risk.  And y'all know me... I like to live on the edge.  Drag racing.  Sky diving.  Scuba diving.  Biting into hot food.

It was totally worth it.

Happy Monday, my friends.