Try these Unstuffed Peppers for an easy, healthy dinner! Our kids actually EAT the peppers when we cut them up and mix them in with the seasoned beef!
Who doesn’t love easy, 15 minute dinners like this? Be sure and try our equally easy Beefy Tomato Soup or this 8 minute air fryer or 15 minute oven dinner, Chinese Boneless Spareribs!
A Dinner Recipe Your Kids Will Love!
Do you love making stuffed peppers? I mean, yes, I do. But my kids will hungrily eat the filling out and leave that big pepper behind. Recently we’ve made more stuffed pepper recipes that I absolutely LOVE. And I have to say our kids actually do eat the pepper now, we’ve got ’em trained;)
I can’t say too much, I did that too for most of my life. We weren’t a big vegetable family growing up so the bowl of frozen peas and carrots was only on the table for special occasions or holidays.
Now we try and have fresh vegetables on the table every night, or at least a dinner that involves vegetables like stuffed peppers. So to prevent our kids from just eating the filling we created this Unstuffed Pepper recipe instead.
All you need to do is dice the peppers and cook them with the beef and onions when you make the “filling”, but the filling is the dinner.
Once you add the tomato sauce and let the beef simmer together with the vegetables…you won’t be able to stop eating it right from the pan.
How To Serve
We like to serve this recipe over rice or pasta like elbow macaroni (really any pasta will do, it’s almost like a meat sauce with peppers) but you can also serve it over cauliflower rice for a low carb dinner!
Piling this beef filling on buns like a peppery sloppy joe also works. A topping for nachos, add beans and make a quick chili…there’s so many things you can do with this Unstuffed Peppers recipe besides just eating it as is!
Variations
You can use ground turkey or pork or even ground chicken or lamb. The peppers kind of have to stay or this wouldn’t be a twist on a stuffed pepper recipe but you can definitely swap out the type of meat.
On that note, you can absolutely sneak more vegetables into this recipe, too! We have teenage boys in our house now so we’re WAY past trying to get our kids to eat.
WAY past that. Now we just try and keep our refrigerators full of food. Going to the grocery store every 2 or 3 days is not unheard if. ALL THEY DO IS EAT.
But I do feel like we gave them a good food foundation, not making too many separate meals when they were young (I won’t say never, just not often) and introducing them to all sorts of different foods as much as we could. Dinner recipes like this one definitely helped when they were younger, they ate this up like rock stars, and still do!
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Unstuffed Peppers
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeThis super easy dinner recipe will help get the vegetables in your kids mouths instead of leaving them behind!
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
- 3 cups diced bell peppers (mixed colors)
- 1 cup diced onion
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 cups of tomato sauce
Instructions
- Add the olive oil to a skillet over medium heat. Brown the ground beef until cooked through and drain any excess grease from the pan.
- Add the peppers, onions and garlic to the beef. Stir and cook for 5-7 minutes until the vegetables are softened.
- Add in the cumin, salt and pepper, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and the tomato sauce. Stir well to combine and then taste for seasonings.
- Simmer over low heat for 10 minutes and serve.
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Stove Top
- Cuisine: American
Loved this recipe my husband and I couldn’t stop talking about how delicious it was. He was excited to take the leftovers for lunch. Adding this to our favs recipes and will be adding this to our dinner rotation.
Help! I’m the chief cook and bottle washer in our home since my wife had both hips replaced and her balance is off now. She will never eat any peppers but I love them.
What can I use instead??
First of all I think you should make this and see if she’ll try it! Use red or orange peppers that aren’t as sharp in flavor as green. The way the peppers are chopped up small in this recipe, I find that everyone loves them. Even my kids when they were little. But if she really doesn’t want the peppers, then you can try using zucchini, cauliflower, mushrooms or really any vegetable that she likes. We hope your wife recovers quickly, she’s luck to have you!
It was AMAZING!!
I use ground turkey, usually more peppers than it calls for and homemade tomato sauce I freeze every fall. Always perfect and always a winner at our table!
I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but I did want to comment that it was a great recipe base for us. We are a plant based family so we subbed Impossible ground “meat” and due to it’s already salty nature I omitted the soy sauce and salt. Everything else we kept the same and we all enjoyed it, including three small kiddos. Thanks for sharing! This one will be repeated. :)
I really appreciate the comment, it’s great to see how adaptable really any recipe can be!
After making this recipe at least a dozen times, I’ve finally copied it into my write-in recipe book (reserved for the really good ones). Our kids love this dish and request it often, and they, too, eat the peppers!
That is quite the compliment! I’m so glad this recipe has become a family favorite!
I love this recipe, it’s so good. I don’t add the soy or worcestershire and substitute salsa for the tomato sauce. I will be making this again soon.
My family loves this recipe! We use 1lb lean turkey and extra bell peppers.
We make it with turkey all the time, too! So glad you like it!