Thursday, July 14, 2016

I broke out the crockpot again!  This time, some quick stuffed bell peppers were cooking in my kitchen.  This has become my two for one meal deal.  Not everyone in my house loves bell peppers, so I use part of the mix to make a little, mini-meatloaf.  Everyone is happy and that is awesome!  Go ahead, break out your crockpot and try these.  Set it to cook for 4 hours and move on to better things, which, around here, includes a game of Uno, because we’re a wild and crazy bunch!  🙂  Y’all have a wonderful day!

Crockpot Stuffed Bell Peppers

Ingredients:

4 bell peppers

1/4 cup of water

For Meat Mixture:

1 pound of ground beef

1 cup cooked rice

1 egg

1 tablespoon of yellow, prepared mustard

3 heaping tablespoons of chunky salsa, or to taste

3 tablespoons of tomato sauce (from 8 ounce can)

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder, or to taste

1/4 teaspoon onion powder, or to taste

Salt and pepper, to taste

Additional tomato sauce to drizzle over top of peppers

Shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:

Slice tops off peppers and remove seeds.  Wash peppers and set aside.  Add 1/4 cup of water to crockpot.

For Meat Mixture:  To a medium sized bowl, add ground beef, cooked rice, egg, mustard, salsa, 3 tablespoons tomato sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.  Squish together with your hands until totally combined.

Fill each pepper with 1/4 of the meat mixture.  Place peppers into crockpot.  Drizzle remaining tomato sauce on top of each pepper and top each one with cheese.  Cover and cook on high for 4 hours.  Enjoy!

If you’re like me and need the two for one deal…

For the meatloaf… before adding cooked rice to the mix, move about 1/4 of meat mixture to a separate bowl and, instead of rice, add about 6-8 crumbled Ritz Crackers.  Mix until totally combined.  Place meatloaf mixture into baking dish and form into mini-loaf.  Cover with tomato sauce.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes.  (For extra flavor, if you’re interested, at last 20 minutes of baking, drizzle ketchup on top of meatloaf and return to oven.)

Makes 3 Crockpot Bell Peppers and 1 mini-meatloaf.  A two for one… sort of.  🙂

♥Tawnya