Jack-o-lantern Stuffed Peppers

These Jack-O-Lantern Stuffed Peppers are a magical meal for the Halloween season. They make an enchanting addition to your festive dinner party table. This meal also happens to be easy to prepare, warm, and filling. Feed it to the kids before trick or treating, their bellies will stay full (this means less gorging on candy). In any setting, fancy or casual, this meal is sure to please.

Ingredients:

1 lb. of ground beef

3 cups of cooked rice

1 1/2 cups of Pizza Sauce or Spaghetti Sauce

1 cup of mild salsa

1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese

1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup chopped onions

4-6 bell peppers

Italian Seasonings

For this recipe you'll need to start with the orange bell peppers. Select large peppers that are tall enough to provide plenty of space to carve. Also, pick peppers that have 4 lobes (sections) for better balance instead of 3 lobe peppers. Look at the bottom of the pepper, lobes provide the "feet" of the pepper, four is better than three since we want our peppers to stand up.

We're going to start by carving faces into the raw peppers. Raw peppers are stiffer and easier to carve than cooked peppers. To carve faces, you can trace shapes onto the peppers or try carving them free handed with a small paring knife. Don't worry, if you mess up and the carving is unrecoverable, just cut the pepper in half from top to bottom and lay it on it's side like a traditional stuffed pepper. You can always serve a mixture of both carved and traditional and you never have to admit anything. When you have enough carved and sliced peppers, slice the tops off of the carved peppers like a jack-o-lantern. Clean out the seeds and membranes from all of your peppers.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Set the peppers and pepper tops aside.

Next, we need to prepare 3 cups of cooked rice. Any variety of rice you choose will have directions for cooking on the box or bag. The rice is a chance to customize the flavor profile of this meal by using prepackaged rices. Mexican Rice will give you a Southwest flavor, Stir Fry Rice gives an Asian flavor, Plain rice is a little more Americana. Basically pick what you'd like to serve with the meal and then choose your rice accordingly, this is a very flexible meal. For this version, I used plain 5 minute rice. Pour 1.5 cups of water into a medium pot and bring it to a boil. Add 1.5 cups of 5 minute rice into the boiling water, stir. Remove the pot from heat and cover for 5 minutes. When the water has been fully absorbed, fluff the rice with a fork. Set aside covered.

After the rice is prepared, brown 1 LB. of ground beef. Drain and set aside. In the same skillet, add 1/4 cup of chopped white onions. Stir until the onions change to a yellow/crisped appearance. Add back the drained beef. Quickly add in 1.5 cups of pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce, 1 cup of mild salsa, 1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese, one cup of shredded mozzarella, one tsp. of Italian Seasonings, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir over low heat until blended, remove from heat.

Prepare a baking dish that will fit all of your peppers without touching each other. Fill the dish with 1/2 inch of water. This keeps the peppers from burning onto the bottom of the dish while baking. Arrange your peppers in the dish sitting in the water to be sure the dish is large enough for the peppers to stand without touching. This will prevent damage when plating the softer, cooked peppers.

Spoon in the prepared beef/rice filling to each pepper and replace it in the tray. Reserve some filling for plating the completed peppers before serving. Place the baking dish into your preheated oven at 350 and bake for 30-35 minutes. Do not bake the pepper tops, leave them set aside.

After baking, remove the cooked peppers from the oven. Immediately, carefully remove the peppers from the baking dish and place onto your plates. Add some of the reserved filling to either side of the Jack-O-Lantern peppers, this looks festive and also helps the peppers stay upright. Add the uncooked pepper top and garnish with basil leaves for a realistic pumpkin effect.

I serve these peppers with a spider decoration on the plate but you can pick whatever Halloween item you like. A few pieces of trick or treating candy is also a fun addition that adds to the theme. This is a warm, filling meal before trick or treating. The protein-rice-pepper combination also keeps tummies full so the kids won't be able to fill up on candy. Yes, that's a sneaky mom-trick but a good one, use it wisely. Serve and enjoy!