Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers

I don’t know how much originality there is to this recipe for Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers but it sure felt like an experiment to me because I combined things that were new for me.  My local grocery store had this crazy sale on peppers a week ago and I needed to do something with what I bought.  Plus a few weeks back I had made homemade taco seasoning I thought I’d used to make my own Mexican flavored ground turkey meat.  I know I’ve been attempting to eat clean lately so you’re probably wondering, is ground turkey meat clean?  My best response to that is, I don’t think so.  But, with that said, I don’t think it’s that far off.  It is processed, because let’s face it, it doesn’t come from the turkey like that.  But it’s an exception I’ll make occasionally to add some healthy-ish variety to what I eat.

I gathered my ingredients, well most of them and started cooking.  First I threw the turkey into a large skillet and started cooking it and then I chopped my onion.  Once I knew the turkey meat was cooked I poured one 6 ounce can of pure tomato juice over the turkey; I learned this trick from my mom.  When I was growing up and she’d cook taco meat, instead of using water she’d add tomato juice.  I have to confess that ground turkey meat kind of grosses me out because it is so white….so the tomato juice helps with this.  Next I added a generous serving of taco seasoning.  I just dumped it from the mason jar I keep it in until I thought I had enough so I honestly have no clue how much I actually used.  Then after draining the beans I added them along with the chopped onion to the skillet.

Oh and while the turkey meat was cooking I went a head and cooked the whole container of Quinoa that I had.  I’ve heard that it lasts for a few days after being cooked and I figured it was the perfect excuse to experiment with the left over Quinoa.

I added roughly a 1/4 C of salsa to the skillet then dumped the contents of both of my pans into a large bowl to mix together to make the stuffing for my peppers.  This made a ton and I still had quite a bit of Quinoa left over.

Now that I had my mixture ready, I started cutting up my peppers, lengthwise and deseeding them so they were reading for stuffing.  Thanks to that helpful tip from Teal a few weeks back, I knew to put a small amount of water in my baking dish before placing the peppers inside.

I got busy stuffing the bell peppers and I kept stuffing and stuffing and stuffing….I had 6 bell peppers, 2 red, 2 orange and 2 yellow and since Beth could tell I had so much stuffing she gave me her yellow bell pepper to contribute.  Needless to say this made tons.  I had 7 peppers stuffed along with a very large portion left over.

I placed the stuffed peppers into the baking dish and sprinkled on some 2% Mexican Blend shredded cheese.  Again…I know not clean…but as you can see I didn’t use a whole lot.  I covered the dish with foil and cooked them for 40 minutes on 350 degrees.

It is kind of nice that this made so many servings because now I have a ton of meals prepped for the week ahead.  Though I may tire of these and end up freezing one or two servings like my cousin Chase does for reheating later.

As best I can tell each serving, which is two halves of a pepper, is just under 350 calories.  So not too bad, especially considering how tasty they were and hopefully will be through out the week.

With all that color from the Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers it almost looks like a Mexican fiesta in the baking dish!