These stuffed peppers are easy to prepare, and so tasty! I made them for Christmas Eve dinner this year and everyone loved them! I prepared a double batch, and froze half after cooking to save for the following week. We love having delicious leftovers in the freezer for a quick dinner, and our friends who came to dinner are still raving about them! 🙂
The filling calls for cooked brown rice. Cooking the rice takes more time than anything else, but it’s easy enough to make the rice ahead of time so it’s ready to go when you want to start the peppers.
These are typically made with green peppers, but the colored peppers are so beautiful and we wanted to do something special for the holidays. They all taste delicious, but for special occasions the colored peppers are totally worth the extra few bucks.
The pepper filling really takes on an interesting and tasty texture, it almost seems like ground beef. Other vegan plant-based fiends asked us to confirm a couple of times that there was actually no meat in them. Not that mimicking meat was our goal, we don’t aim for that, but it’s just how they turned out. This time I topped the filling with spinach and sautéed mushrooms, but really any greens will do.
I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
| Stuffed Peppers | Print |
- 6 large bell peppers
- 1 cup walnuts
- 1 cup cooked brown rice
- 1 cup cooked (or canned) garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 cup oat bran
- ½ tsp marjoram
- ¼ tsp thyme
- ¼ tsp onion powder
- 2 tbsp Braggs liquid aminos or low sodium soy sauce
- 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 10 oz or more of fresh or frozen spinach
- 10 oz mushrooms
- 1 jar tomato sauce (I like Muir Glen Roasted Garlic)
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Pour a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a pan large enough to hold the peppers, so they won't stick.
- Wash, slice, and sauté the mushrooms until the juices are reabsorbed and they are fully cooked. Then set aside.
- Steam or water sauté fresh spinach, or thaw frozen, and set aside.
- Prep the peppers by slicing the tops off so they can be placed back on top, and clean out the seeds.
- Place the peppers standing up in the pan on top of the sauce.
- Next, prepare the filling. Using a food processor to chop the walnuts into tiny pieces, pour into a large bowl, and set aside for later.
- Process the garbanzo beans and brown rice in the food processor until a course mash forms.
- Add the mash to the walnuts and then stir in the oat bran, marjoram, thyme, onion powder, liquid aminos and mustard.
- Now comes the fun part! Mash the mixture together with your hands until it is well mixed and sticks together.
- Divide the mixture into six equal pieces and place each piece into a pepper. Push it down into the pepper so about ¾ of the pepper is filled. (You may have some mixture left over, depending on the size of your peppers)
- Top with a little bit of sauce, then add spinach and mushrooms, top with more tomato sauce, and replace the top of the pepper.
- Cook for 45 - 50 minutes, or until the tops start to brown.
- You can heat up remaining tomato sauce to serve on the side, or over the sliced stuffed peppers.
Prepping the peppers, slice, stuff, stuff, and cap!
They come out of the oven looking and smelling so good!
Ready to eat, and totally delicious!!
Updated recipe! Thanks, they are great!
Yes David, finally! 🙂 We are so glad you enjoyed them!
I want to make this…I do not fully understand step 6..do you put the cooked mushrooms in the pan on top of the sauce and then scoop them out and put in the peppers or do you put them directly in the peppers?
Thanks
Oh my gosh, thank you Sheila! That was a total typo, step 6 should have said to stand the pepper up in the pan, not the mushrooms. 🙂 The mushrooms go inside the peppers after they have been water sautéed in a pan on the stove top. I hope that helps, and thank you for letting us know about the confusion / typo!
This recipe is so amazing!! I love it!
Are the spinach and mushrooms sautéed? This is a “must try for me.
Also, have you ever tried seitan?
Yes, I sauté the mushrooms and spinach in a little bit of water to cook them. If the spinach is frozen, you can just defrost it though, no need to sauté it. I have tried seitan, but I like to use the least processed ingredients that I can, so aim for using nuts and beans instead. Try the recipe though, it’s a good one!!