Name: Homemade Stuffed Peppers With Ground Beef
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: 450g/ 1 pound ground beef; 1/3 cup rice; 1/2 onion, chopped; 1/2 tsp cardamom; 1/2 tsp mint; 1/2 tsp cumin; 6 large red peppers (bell or pointed); 2 Tbsp flour; 1 cup milk; 2 Tbsp butter; 1 tsp oregano; 2 bay leaves

Make these easy homemade stuffed peppers with ground beef for dinner tonight in around 30 minutes. You can share this dish with your family or meal prep for the week!

Homemade Easy Stuffed Peppers

With these ground beef stuffed peppers, we’re going back to my Bulgarian roots and making a classic dish from that region. Like most Balkan dishes, there’s no melted cheese involved, but a lot of flavors. It’s a classic and one of my favorites.

Ingredients For These Stuffed Peppers

Peppers. Choose red or green, pointed or bell peppers – it doesn’t really matter.

Ground Meat. Any type of ground meat will work in this recipe – beef, pork, turkey or even chicken.

Rice. Short grain, milk rice would be best here, but any type of rice or even bulgur will work well.

Onion, herbs and spices. We’re using oregano and bay leaves for the sauce and the onion in the meat and rice mixture.

Milk, butter and flour. The best part about these peppers is the sauce. It’s creamy and absolutely essential. And it’s made with butter, milk and flour.

How To Make Stuffed Peppers

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and start making these easy stuffed peppers with ground beef filling!

Wash the peppers and remove the cores by cutting round the stem and pulling it out.

Mix the ground meat with the spices, onion and rice.

Fill the peppers with the ground beef mixutre, if possible do not overstuff (fill until 3/4) as the rice will expand after cooking and the filling can come out of the peppers. I did this, because I was using pointed peppers – they’re a bit more difficult to stuff.

Put the peppers in water, covered almost completely in a large non-stick pan. Cook at medium-high heat and sdd salt while cooking.

Transfer the peppers onto a plate while preparing the sauce. Whisk the flour with the leftover water from the peppers at low heat. Add milk, oregano, bay leaves, butter and stir continuously to make sure no lumps are left. Stir consistently at low heat until the sauce thickens. Alternatively, you can use a hand blender to blend the ingredients for the sauce together for a smoother texture, but you’ll still need to stir once you heat these inside the pan, otherwise, lumps will form.

Once the sauce is done, turn the heat off and bring the peppers back into the pan. Serve immediately!

Tips:

Make sure to combine the ground meat, onion and rice very well together.
When cooking, the water should cover the peppers at least halfway.
Stir the sauce for the homemade stuffed peppers with ground beef, consistently at low heat. This is the only kinda difficult part about this dish: if you leave the sauce alone when cooking or cook it at high temperature it will form lumps and won’t be enjoyable. Therefore it’s very important to be stirring all the time at low temperature.
Use a microwave to reheat any leftovers you have.

Meal Prep

This is a meal you can definitely meal prep for the next 3 days, as these ground beef stuffed peppers keep well in the fridge and can be reheated in the microwave.

The recipe is for about 6 large peppers and is perfect for dinner. You can also take it to work for lunch if you have a microwave there.

More Easy Recipes For Dinner

I hope you enjoy these easy homemade stuffed peppers with ground beef if you do make them! If you need even more easy dinner ideas, try these out: