Santa Fe Stuffed Peppers

Remember how I used to post three times a week? Yeah, me neither. Holy crap I’ve been busy. I last posted on February 27, so pretty much two whole months of silence. Sorry about that.

So here is a recipe that I made this week, it is a hybrid of a few recipes that I found on Pinterest and ended up with a bonus dinner out of it as well.

Ingredients

1 lb. ground turkey breast

1 tsp. kosher salt

1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes

1 can (15 oz) black beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup (or more) frozen corn

1 cup quinoa (uncooked)

6-8 fresh red bell peppers

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

2 green onions, sliced

Sour cream (optional)

Instructions

PREHEAT YOUR OVEN TO 350 DEGREES. I swear if I cook one more thing and am not told to preheat the oven at the top of the recipe I never remember until I’m about to throw whatever I’m cooking into the oven. And mine takes FOREVER to heat up.

You’re going to want to start with you quinoa and get that going first. If your quinoa has directions, by all means go with those. Here’s what I did. Rinse quinoa under running water. Bring one and a half cups of water to boil with quinoa in a pan. Once it boils reduce to low and simmer until most of your water has evaporated, kind of like cooking rice, for about ten minutes.  I, of course, forgot to set damn timer, so I had to strain mine because I had no idea how long it had been cooking and didn’t want to overcook the quinoa.

Cut off the tops of your peppers, removed the seeds and set in a large baking dish. Mine could only hold six so that is what I went with.

I cut up the remaining bit of pepper from the top scrap and ended up with almost a cup of of sweet peppers to use later this week.

Dice your onion and start to sauté that in a nonstick pan with some butter or oil. Once your onions are mostly done add your turkey and brown that.

Add salt and any other seasoning at this point, give a good mix and then add your tomatoes, black bean and corn. I used two cans of tomatoes and as you can see that was A BAD IDEA. Almost no room to stir everyone together. Simmer this mix for about ten minutes.

If you have the room, add your quinoa in and stir together, if you’re an idiot, grab a large mixing bowl and add turkey mixture and quinoa and give it a good stir.

Fill the peppers with your turkey mixture, cover with foil and toss (gently) in the oven. Cook these bad boys for about 40 minutes and then removed foil and top with cheese. Cook for another five or so minutes until the cheese has melted. Serve with green onions and sour cream. Yum!

Extra bonus recipe. I had a decent amount of leftover filling, so I added two small cans of tomato sauce and some spices and made Santa Fe Chili! I’m so smart. I let it cool and then tossed it into a freezer safe container and put that in the freezer for a day I’m too tired (lazy) to cook.