Not Your Mom's Stuffed Peppers

Well, if you are Bert, then these are your mom's stuffed peppers. I'm going to be bold here and say this is my own recipe. Someone else out there might be doing it, but I haven't seen it yet, ergo, it's my recipe. But I'm sharing it with you, because I like you.

We typically have some pretty prolific pepper plants in the garden and as we harvest them, we just cut the tops off and empty out the seeds and freeze a bunch of them whole to use for stuffed peppers. But we needed a twist on the standard stuffed pepper. What to do, what to do? Hmm...how about Mexican stuffed peppers?

Mexican Stuffed Peppers

6 bell peppers, tops cut off and seeds and membranes removed (I don't thaw mine because they would get mushy; just stuff them frozen)
1 box yellow rice, cooked according to package instructions
1 pound ground beef
1 packet taco seasoning
1 egg
Salsa (about 1 jar)

Cook the rice according to the instructions on the box.

Mix half the cooked rice, ground beef, taco seasoning, and egg in medium bowl.

Fill peppers with meat mixture and place in baking dish. Pour salsa over stuffed peppers. (I used Keith's sort-of salsa. A jar of store salsa should work fine or maybe you could try taco sauce.)

Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 1/2 hours. Use a meat thermometer to be sure they are cooked all the way through (internal temperature should be 165 degrees, so says Keith, our resident food safety monitor). Serve with remaining yellow rice and cornbread.

Inevitably, I get these in the oven later than I anticipated and we end up eating dinner at about 6:30 because I forget how long they take to cook all the way through. Maybe they taste so good because by the time they are ready, we're really hungry.