Un-Stuffed Pepper Bake

We both love stuffed peppers! Since my husband buys bulk ground turkey meat at Costco, I often make stuffed peppers. I wanted to try something different this time to switch it up a little bit, plus I only had 2 peppers which I knew would not be enough. I decided to make an “Un-Stuffed” pepper bake using most of the ingredients I include in my regular stuffed peppers.

The main ingredients I used for the “stuffing” is ground turkey, a medium onion chopped, garlic powder, garlic, salt, and Italian seasoning:

I mix all of that together so the flavor incorporates throughout the meat:

I add the mixture into a cooking pan and brown the meat and soften the onions at the same time. Since ground turkey is very lean, there is not much fat to drain, but I remove any that may be in the pan:

I sliced up my 2 red peppers (any color can be used) and added them into the meat mixture to soften:

The flavoring I use in my stuffed peppers is usually ketchup, worcestershire sauce, garlic, a little bit of tomato sauce, fresh tomato, bread crumbs, and an egg white. Since the mixture does not need to form together into a “stuffing”, the bread crumbs and egg white is not needed. Therefore in the pan, I just added the ketchup, worcestershire sauce, garlic and a little bit of tomato sauce that I had leftover:

Instead of having chopped tomato in my filling for the peppers, I decided to thinly slice tomato and put them on top of the meat mixture since there is no filling. I lightly seasoned the tomato with garlic powder:

I then put the whole pan underneath the broiler so the tomatoes would cook down a bit:

Once they were done (probably 5 minutes), I added a bit of reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese since I normally top our stuffed peppers with cheese:

I again put this under the broiler and waited for the cheese to get bubbly:

This gives all of the flavors of stuffed peppers but it is just presented in a different way. Plus there is no bread crumbs or egg added, made with ground turkey, and low fat cheese is used making it a bit more healthy. The pepper bake scoops out like a casserole and is delicious:

This is just another example of how I like to switch things up in our Newlywed Kitchen! I am always trying to think of ways to make classic meals a bit different and I hope you look forward to new dishes to come as much as I do!