Stuffed Peppers with Golden Mashed Potatoes

Now that it’s getting cold outside it's time for some good old comfort food! I love stuffed peppers and Shepard’s Pie, so I made a hybrid of the two! There are many ways to make stuffed peppers, this is just one of the many ways!

I normally like to stuff peppers with rice and ground beef, but this time I flavored my ground beef with beef stew seasoning and topped it off with golden mashed potatoes. My favorite part is the golden, crispiness that the mashed potatoes create to top off the stuffed pepper!

Ingredients:

-1/2 pound “meatloaf mix” meat

-1/2 large onion

-2 tablespoons McCormick beef stew spice mix

-1/4 cup water

-4 green peppers, hollowed out

-2 cups mashed potatoes (either from scratch, frozen or box mix)

-1 teaspoon garlic powder

-2 tablespoons butter

- salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Step#1

Wash and hollow out your green peppers

Step#2

Chop and sauté your onions until translucent, then add ground meat and cook through. Add “beef stew spice mix” and one cup of water. Let simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.

Step#3

While that simmers, start your mashed potatoes. SHORTCUT- I used a box of dried mashed potato flakes and added the butter, garlic powder, salt and pepper. You could also use premade frozen or refrigerated mashed potatoes.

Step#4

Begin to fill your peppers by adding a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes on the bottom. Follow by a healthy helping of the cooked meat mixture. Follow with another few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes on top to cover all the meat.

Step#5

Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes until you get a golden crown on the top of your mashed potatoes and the peppers are cooked. You may want to rotate your baking dish about 35 minutes in to ensure even-browning.

FUN FACT: There are different types of peppers, but did you know that green bell peppers are green because they have not ripened yet? The more they ripen, the sweeter they get AND the colors change to yellow, orange and red!