Slow Cooker Stuffed Peppers

March 13th, 2008

When I was planning my meals for the week last Sunday, what to make for tonight’s dinner stumped me. I needed something in the crock pot because I knew we’d get home right at dinnertime, and I wanted to use up meat from my freezer. My friend Carol at Pure Sugar suggested inventing some sort of stuffed pepper soup, and that inspired me to cut right to the chase and just make stuffed peppers. (Carol is the person that introduced me to blogging back in 2000!)

It was just one mistake after another getting dinner made this afternoon. First, I realized that I had defrosted a pair of 1-lb. packages of ground beef when I had intended to only do one. OK, so we’re doubling the recipe. Then the meat wasn’t defrosted fully, and I really didn’t want to have to cook it before throwing it into the peppers. My 20-year old microwave came to the rescue — it actually has a “defrost ground beef” and I used it successfully tonight. Whoo hoo! Score one for the cook.

I was running late, so I only partially cooked the barley on the stove (for 20 minutes instead of 45) before adding it to the meat mixture — I am not that experienced cooking with barley, and I wasn’t sure if putting it in to the crock pot raw would work. Next time I’ll skip the extra cooking step, it would have been fine, I think. In addition to the meat and barley, the stuffing included 1 can of condensed tomato soup (next time I would just use tomato paste), 8 oz. mushrooms (chopped), about a cup of parsley (finely chopped), 2 tsp. garlic, and 1/2 c. green onion (thinly sliced), ground pepper, and the diced tops that I cut off my five red, yellow, and orange peppers.

I only wound up using about a quarter to a third of the stuffing in the actual peppers (4 large and one small pepper). Then I slapped the rest of the meat mixture into an 8×8 pan and baked it like a meatloaf in my toaster oven for an hour at 350° F. (Merrie, you must be so proud of me! I made meatloaf!) I’ll freeze it for another time.

For the peppers that went into the crock pot: I mixed 8 oz. vegetable stock and a 28-oz. can of fire-roasted crushed tomatoes in the crock. I placed the 5 gently-stuffed peppers in the liquid, and then spooned some of the liquid on top of the stuffing. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours.

The peppers were very tender — no knife needed! And I was a little concerned about the dish tasting greasy since the meat had not been browned beforehand. However, this was actually the least-greasy beef dish I’ve ever cooked in my crock pot. It was overall a very comforting, easy dish. We sopped up all the tomato sauce with challah. Or, if you are my kids, you just ate challah.

All in all, I wound up with a delicious dinner but not quite a recipe to share — the proportions were just too off. If you tinker around with your own stuffed pepper version, let me know in the comments.

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Entry Filed under: Beef, Crock pot