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
- Deep Stainless Steel Skillet
Nutrition
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!
This might have been asked before, or it could be a stupid question. But do you wash the rice before adding?
That’s not a stupid question at all. :) Some people prefer to rinse their rice and that’s fine, but it’s not mandatory. Just make sure it’s drained well so as not to throw off the liquid ratios.
One of my roommates can’t eat chopped tomatoes (seed allergy), could I use more tomato sauce in place of the chopped tomatoes?
Yes, that would probably work. :) You may need to increase the broth a smidge, since the juice from the canned tomatoes adds to the liquid amount used to cook the rice, while tomato sauce might not help that much.
Made this with Gardein beefless ground and everything worked well, except it needed a bit more flavor. Any suggestions?
You can try adding some Italian seasoning blend to increase the herbs, and it might just be that you need a touch more salt. Salt really helps amplify flavors and actually helps your tongue distinguish between different flavors, so sometimes that’s all you really need to make the flavors pop. :)
Instead of ground beef I used a pound turkey Italian sausages skinning the membrane and using like ground beef. . Everything else the same. Absolutely delicious.
Hi!! Excited to try this. Can I make it with ground turkey vs ground beef? And maybe brown rice vs white? Just want to make sure it wouldn’t mess up the flavors too much
Ground turkey should work effortlessly, although the brown rice swap won’t work quite as well. The brown rice will change the flavor quite a bit, IMHO, but the larger problem is that it takes more liquid and a much longer cooking time, so you’d have to change multiple other things about the recipe. And if you increase the cooking time, the other ingredients are likely to overcook. :(
So delicious! I added a third pepper and used the Yves brand fake soy meat and it worked great! It did take about 5 minutes longer to cook the rice. Will make again, the sauce topping was key.
This was so good! It made enough for me to pack up the leftovers for several lunches this week!
Can this be made ahead of time then frozen?
Yes, this one should freeze great. :)
This was a hit in our house; kids included. Everything was devoured. This recipe is a keeper. : )
I made this the other night. I really liked it a lot. It was easy to do and great that I wasn’t having to dirty up too many pots/pans in the house. I did find that the cook time needed to be extended from the stated 15 minutes to about 20-25 minutes to fully allow the rice to cook. Other than extend the cook time I followed the recipe as stated, except that I added some salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and oregano to the tomato sauce mixture and also increased the amount of Worcestershire sauce I added to taste, but that is obviously not necessary. It will definitely go into our rotation. Thank you so much for this recipe!
Excellent! Thank you!
Jesus. So good.
I made this on Wednesday for my family of 4 and it was a hit. Everyone enjoyed it and it was so easy! We had leftovers for Thursday lunch and Thursday dinner! The only change I made was using 1 lb beef instead of half. I didn’t double anything else.
Just curious – when you say uncooked rice are you using minute rice or fully uncooked rice? We used uncooked rice like the recipe calls for and it didn’t get anywhere near cooked in 15 minutes, we had to add an additional 30 minutes to cook time to fully cook it. Just a suggestion to maybe be more specific with what type of “uncooked” rice to use. Otherwise the recipe is delicious and we look forward to making it again sometime. 😁
It wasn’t minute rice, just regular long-grain white rice. If it had been minute rice it would have been listed that way. :) If your rice took that long to cook through the issue was probably that the broth was not thoroughly simmering, so the heat may have needed to be increased a bit. Unfortunately, with variations in cookware and stove top heat settings, you sometimes have to adjust a bit from the suggested heat setting to get things just right.
Just scarfed down a bowl of this! Really good! I was out of minced garlic so I added a good bit of onion powder, along with seasoned salt and Tony Chachere’s creole seasoning {I put that stuff in everything}. I also used a whole pound of ground beef because a half-pound just didn’t look like enough. I cooked the it for a good twenty minutes and the rice was still a bit firm. I added shredded Italian cheese blend to the top, since that’s all we had. The family loved it and I’d absolutely make it again. Next time I’ll double it!
Oops, forgot to give it a rating. 5* for sure!