Italian Style Stuffed Peppers

 Traditional stuffed peppers with savory beef, tomato sauce, lots of gooey cheese and a secret ingredient that eliminates the need for rice! A delicious, people-pleasing, 21 Day Fix meal!

 Stuffed peppers make me happy. It's one of those meals that just tastes like home. Doesn't pretty much every family make their own version of this dish? Mine certainly does, that's why it reminds me of my mother and my grandmother and gives me the warm fuzzies.

Today I've 21 Day Fixed this comfort-y meal. Truth be told, I didn't have to change very much. I swapped out the regular ground beef you might pick up for some super-lean (95%) ground beef and I gave up the white rice for... dun, dun DUN!! Cauliflower "rice!"

Now, you can use an equal amount of cooked brown rice in this recipe instead, but I did this for a reason. If you don't use any carbs in your stuffed peppers, than you can put that yummy tomato sauce on top of some creamy mashed potatoes!

Since this is very important to me, I decided to try this alternative and it ended up working out beautifully! Plus, since you don't have to cook the cauliflower rice (because it cooks in the stuffed pepper) it saves you the time that it would've taken to cook the rice. Bonus!

The cauliflower rice itself is super simple and quick. All you have to do is throw some cauliflower florets into a food processor and pulse until you get rice-sized pieces. How easy is that? If you don't have a food processor, you could use a box grater. It'll work, it's just not quite as quick and easy.

One last note on this recipe. I've tried it using the amount of cheese listed in the recipe and using half (1 blue per pepper or ½ of a blue) and I just wanted to note that if you only have ½ of a blue to use, this will still be DELICIOUS! I list a full blue here because I personally favor the extra cheesy-ness.

It just makes it taste so indulgent and I love to have a meal that really tastes bad for you every once in a while when I'm on the fix. Lots of ooey-gooey cheese does exactly that! It feels like a cheat meal, but it's not. Enjoy  😉

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📖 Recipe

Cheesy Italian Stuffed Peppers

Yield: 4 servings

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

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Ingredients

• 4 green bell peppers, tops, ribs and seeds removed
• ½ lb 95% lean ground beef (if you can't find this, use lean ground turkey)
• 1 ½ cups canned tomato sauce
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup of onions, chopped
• 1 cup cauliflower rice (instructions below)
• 1 ⅓ cups shredded Italian cheese blend or mozzarella*
• 1 tbs Italian seasoning
• salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

To make the cauliflower rice:

1. Cut one small head of cauliflower into florets. Grind up in a food processor until the pieces are about the size of grains of rice. If you don't have a food processor, you can use a hand grater instead.

For the stuffed peppers:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large skillet, brown the ground beef with the onions and garlic. Season with the Italian seasoning, a small amount of salt, and pepper.
3. Once cooked through, if there is some excess water, drain it. Stir in the cauliflower rice, ¾ cup of the tomato sauce, ⅔ cup of the shredded cheese. Taste filling to check seasonings and adjust if necessary.
4. Set peppers upright in a square baking dish. Fill them with the meat mixture. Top each with the remaining tomato sauce. Cover and bake 1 hour. Uncover and top with the remaining cheese (about 2 ½ tbs per pepper). Bake an additional 5 -10 minutes or until cheese has melted.

Notes

These are also great using half of the cheese. I've tried both and prefer the extra-cheesy version, but if you only want to use ½ BLUE per pepper, here are the stats: 223 calories / 7 grams of fat.

21 Day Fix Container Equivalents: 1 ¾ GREEN, ½ RED, 1 (OR ½) BLUE

Weight Watchers Freestyle Points: 5

Nutrition Information:

Yield: 4 Serving Size: 1 stuffed pepper
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 280Total Fat: 10g