Stuffed bell peppers are awesome, but I always find them slightly awkward or difficult to eat. Can’t I just throw the ingredients in a bowl and eat it with a fork?! (I feel that way about a lot of food, TBH). So that’s what I ended up doing! These super simple unstuffed bell peppers are cooked in one skillet to make your (my) life super easy and delicious. #yesplease
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Can I Use Cauliflower Rice Instead of White Rice?
Unfortunately, you can not swap out cauliflower rice for the white rice in this recipe. Cauliflower rice releases liquid as it cooks, whereas white rice absorbs it, so you’ll end up with a stuffed bell pepper soup. :) But hey, that actually doesn’t sound so bad! You can also try using cauli rice and skipping the broth, but you’ll be missing a lot of flavor with that option.
Can I Freeze Unstuffed Bell Peppers?
Yes, this recipe freezes great! Make sure to divide the skillet into single serving portions just after cooking, and chill them completely in the refrigerator before transferring to the freezer. Once frozen, they’ll keep in the freezer for about three months and can be reheated in the microwave straight from the freezer (use the defrost setting first, then high until heated through).
Tips for Making One-Pot Rice Dishes
Even cooking plain rice on the stovetop can be a bit challenging for some folks, and when you add in other ingredients it can end up a little more tricky. To make sure your rice cooks thoroughly and evenly, keep these things in mind:
- Cookware: A really good quality (thick and heavy) skillet is really important for making this recipe work correctly. Heavy cookware conducts heat really evenly so the sides of your skillet will cook at the same rate as the part that is right above the flame. If it’s a thin skillet, it might scorch right in the center and leave the outer edges uncooked. If you don’t have a good skillet, a dutch oven or heavy soup pot would also work well.
- Heat level: Another key to cooking rice is making sure the water in the pot (or skillet) is simmering the whole time, but the heat is not so high that it burns on the bottom. So once you’ve got everything in the pot and have already brought everything up to a boil, turn the heat down to the lowest setting that still maintains a light simmer. Since this can vary from stove to stove and the type of cookware you’re using, you’ll need to adjust this based on what you’re hearing and seeing in the pot. Once you get the hang of it, though, it will be easy!
- Use a burner close in size to the bottom of your pot or skillet. If you’re using a wide bottomed pot or skillet over a very small burner, the outside edges of your pot or skillet may not receive enough heat to simmer and cook the rice through.
Love skillet meals? Check out my Chorizo Sweet Potato Skillet, Creamy Chicken and Rice Skillet, or One Pot Teriyaki Chicken and Rice.
Unstuffed Bell Peppers
Servings 6 1 ⅓ cups eachIngredients
- 1 clove garlic ($0.08)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.32)
- 2 bell peppers ($1.53)
- 1 Tbsp olive oil ($0.16)
- 1/2 lb. ground beef ($2.85)
- 1 15oz. can diced tomatoes ($1.00)
- 1 cup long grain white rice (uncooked) ($0.62)
- 1 tsp dried basil ($0.10)
- 1 tsp dried oregano ($0.10)
- 1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper ($0.02)
- 1.5 cups beef broth ($0.07)
- 1 8oz. can tomato sauce ($0.26)
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce ($0.01)
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella ($0.85)
- 1 Tbsp chopped parsley (optional garnish) ($0.05)
Instructions
- Mince the garlic and dice the onion and bell pepper.
- Add the olive oil and ground beef to a deep skillet. Cook the beef over medium heat until it is fully browned.
- Add the diced onion, bell pepper, minced garlic, basil, oregano, and pepper to the skillet. Continue to cook and stir until the onions are soft.
- Next, add the diced tomatoes (with juices), uncooked rice, and beef broth. Give everything a brief stir to combine.
- Place a lid on the skillet and turn the heat up to medium-high. Allow the broth to come up to a full boil. Once boiling, turn the heat down to low and let it continue to simmer for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, turn the heat off and let it rest, lid still in place, for another five minutes.
- While the pot is simmering, combine the tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce.
- Once the rice has rested for 5 minutes, remove the lid and fluff it with a fork, gently folding the ingredients back together (peppers and tomatoes may float to the top while it simmers).
- Pour the prepared tomato sauce over top, then sprinkled the shredded mozzarella over the sauce. Place the lid back on top and let the heat from the skillet melt the mozzarella. Once melted, sprinkle a little chopped parsley on top and serve.
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Equipment
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Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!Scroll down for the step by step photos!
How to Make Unstuffed Bell Peppers – Step by Step Photos
Mince one clove of garlic and dice a yellow onion and bell pepper. Add ½ lb. ground beef to a deep skillet with 1 Tbsp olive oil. Cook the ground beef over medium heat until it has fully browned. Add the diced bell pepper, onion, garlic, 1 tsp dried basil, 1 tsp dried oregano, and about ¼ tsp freshly ground pepper to the skillet. Continue to cook and stir until the onions are soft.
Next, add one 15oz. can of diced tomatoes (with juices), 1 cup uncooked long grain white rice, and 1.5 cups beef broth to the skillet.
Give everything a brief stir to combine. Place a lid on the skillet, turn the heat up to medium-high and allow the broth to come up to a full boil. Once boiling, turn the heat down to low and let it continue to simmer for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, turn the heat off and let it rest, lid still in place, for an additional 5 minutes.
While the rice is simmering, prepare the tomato sauce. Combine one 8oz. can of tomato sauce with 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce. Set the sauce aside.
After the rice has rested for five minutes, remove the lid and fluff it with a fork, gently folding the tomatoes and peppers back into the rice.
Pour the prepared tomato sauce over the rice in the skillet, then top with 1 cup shredded mozzarella. Place the lid back on the skillet and let the residual heat melt the cheese.
Top with chopped parsley, if desired, and serve!
What would you adjust to accommodate brown rice or quinoa’s longer cooking needs? More stock and longer time?
Yes, you would definitely need to adjust the liquid and cooking time for each, but it’s hard to guess without testing it out.
I’m not a big fan of diced tomatoes. Any chance leaving them out of the recipe will ruin or change the dish at all? Will everything cook the same way?
How are you with crushed tomatoes? They’re so fine that it’s almost like sauce. If you can handle that, I’d replace the diced tomatoes with a can of “crushed” tomatoes. That will keep the flavor balance without having chunks of tomatoes. :)
We LOVED this recipe! I added mozzarella cheese after I stirred the tomato sauce through. So yummy & so easy! I also used minute rice so I didn’t have to simmer quite as long. This will definitely be one of my go to recipes now!!!
I made this as directed, but used Chicken Broth, then added Shredded Mozzarella to melt on top. It’s similar to your Southwest Chicken Skillet recipe, which I love and have made quite a few times! Thank you.
i’m annoyed that i didn’t think of this myself. i’ll make it soon.
This looks amazing! However, my boyfriend is super allergic to bell peppers. Do you think I could omit those (or substitute another vegetable) and get a similar flavor?
Hmmm, I think if you left out the bell peppers or substituted them it would completely change the recipe. :( I don’t think there’s an easy substitution here.
Maybe replace the bell pepper with cactus flesh, tomatillos, zucchini, or maybe even bamboo shoots. The flavor won’t be quite the same, but the texture will be similar.
Another fantastic recipe from Beth. Thank you!!! I’m a vegetarian and my husband is most definitely not. But I was able to use vegetarian “beef” crumbles, vegetable better than bouillon, and vegetarian Worcestershire sauce and it turned out great. My husband loved it so much he ate three bowls last night! We also added a little shredded cheddar cheese on top but that’s not 100% needed. This is one of those recipes to keep on hand for when you want something yummy, relatively healthy, and (maybe) most importantly easy.
Yum! This recipe looks so tasty! I don’t have a heavy skillet. Do you think I should cook the rice beforehand?
It won’t turn out quite the same if you do that because the rice won’t be cooking with all the rest of the ingredients and absorbing the flavors.
Thank you so much for this recipe! It is a family favorite. Kid friendly and easy to clean up, what could be better. This week our grocery store had a big sale on those packs of multicolored peppers. To help put them to good use, I started with this recipe as a base, and tweaked it a little to make unstuffed taco peppers.
Thank you so much for this recipe. This is always an absolute favorite at our house! It is kid friendly and there is little clean up. This week our grocery store had a big sale on those multicolored packs of bell peppers, so I stocked up. To help use them all, I took this recipe as a base and tweaked it into unstuffed taco peppers.
I love this recipe and make it all the time! It’s great for dinner and then leftovers for lunch the next day, however I have found I need to adjust the amounts in order to stretch it further. If I want leftovers for the next day, I use a full pound of beef (or turkey, depending on what I have on hand) and 3 bell peppers instead of two. I also REALLY like this with wild rice in place of white rice. Thanks for a great, easy, weeknight meal!
I absolutely love this recipe! It has become a regular meal for us. I appreciate that I only need half a pound of ground beef. This seems so obvious to me now that in certain dishes I can half the ground beef and it doesn’t compromise the dish at all. Why didn’t I think of that! Thanks!
Do you think I could make this with ground turkey and chicken bbroth instead? I happen to l have those handy instead of the beef.
Yes, that should work just fine. :)
This was excellent–absolutely delicious. I did successfully substitute the white rice for quinoa with no other alterations. Yum!!!
This now my official favorite recipe. I have made it six times now, in 3 months. I do use reduced sodium broth and no salt added diced tomatoes with added basil, garlic and oregano (plus what the recipe calls for — this helps with the reduced salt) and skip the worcestershire sauce, but that’s my preference.
I would like to suggest that you do not pour the tomato sauce over the contents of the skillet. It will get all stirred in when you try to dish up the individual servings. Instead pour the sauce over the individual servings [after] dishing them up.