Stuffed Bell Peppers, Greek Style

Being married to a greek from Greece for many years, I will tell you exactly what is missing from this recipe. When you are cooking the meat sauce, place a small cinnamon stick (not cinnamon powder)into the sauce. Allow the sauce to cook for a good 45 minutes, absorbing the wonderful-ness of the cinnamon. You can even add a few whole cloves. This addition applies to anything you are cooking with hamburger meat, example - spaghetti sauce, lasagna meat, stuffed zuccini, moussaka meat, etc. The taste you are trying to get comes from these spices. I guarantee it. Opah, and enjoy!

My family loved it. I substituted the lamb, for ground beef, because that was all I had. And I added fresh mint, which just make it come alive! Thank you for the recipe!

I've made this twice now (once with beef and once with lamb). From reading the comment section I knew to add a cinnamon stick to the meat when it was cooking and I added fresh mint. Right before I stuffed the peppers, I stirred feta cheese into the rice and meat mixture. I served the peppers with tabouleh

combined with the tips from others, it's not bad. suggested alterations: -cinnamon and whole cloves in the meat mixture -mix in herbed, crumbled feta after meat is done, prior to stuffing -omit the rice; cook separately THEN mix after meat mix is done. -parboil the peppers(!) all of these options either increase the flavor, and/or shorten the cooking time. do it! tastes good, short cooking time, light flavor but sits like a dinner.

Very very nice! I did use ground chuck because it's hard to get lamb around here. I used both green and red bell peppers to try because usually I only like red bell peppers but this recipe really works best with green bell peppers. But other than that, I didn't change a thing. I served it with a greek cucumber/parsley yogurt sauce which I happened to have in the fridge and it went very well with this dish. Lovely!

Made these for dinner tonight. Ever since I discovered this recipe on here, I've had a craving for it. Actually, it was a toss-up between this recipe and Tina's Greek stuffed peppers recipe. I hate to say, I wish I would have tried Tina's peppers instead, but I was lazy and thought they were too much work compared to Jeanne's recipe. I guess that's what I get for taking the "easy" route lol! While these weren't "terrible," there is enough I don't like about them to warrant my mediocre review. For one, the filling is VERY dry (I even added half a container of herbed feta to it). My liquid absorbed in half the amount of time suggested (i.e. ~ 8 minutes), but ironically, my rice was still a tad crunchy (?). And the sauce... well, it isn't a sauce at all! I was wondering how chicken broth and tomatoes would reduce to a thickened sauce, but threw all intuition out the window and forged ahead anyways. That was a bad idea.... I'm sad to say, I will not be sending my fiance to work with leftovers (since this yields 6 peppers, I wanted to give my future in-law's the 4 that were left). Oh well! Maybe this will be to your liking, but it wasn't to ours. Thanks anyways, Ms. Gold. :-)

This was wonderful and easy! I too had to use ground beef... couldn't find lamb. I doubled the mint and used green,orange,and yellow bell peppers. I also topped the peppers with 8oz reduced fat Feta cheese for the last 15 minutes in the oven. A real treat!

Thank you for such a great recipe... This has become one of our family's staples.

dee-lish

I used ground beef rather than lamb. I should have doubled the mint and used feta cheese. I also had Greek cucumber sauce. My husband loved it all.

These came out great, I did use a cinnamon stick as suggested by one of the reviews... I will be making these again :-)

Made this tonight with Tabbouleh II & Greek tzaziki sauce from AR. Really delicious! I nice change from stuffed pappers with italian seasonings. I never had tried lamb before, and at 7 something per pound, I won't be dining on lamb every night, but I must say I'm glad to have tried it. Subtle, juicy, and definitely better than ground beef, I might say even better than the organic beef we buy from a local guy. I did cook the meat/onion mix with a cinnamon stick, and it certainly did no harm. Added feta too, because really, when is cheese a bad addition to a dish? DH gobbled it up, so did I with lots of left-overs. Thanks!

Read the recipe and a bunch of reviews. I started with ground lamb and onions. The browning went well, so I looked for my jar of cinnamon sticks--OH NO--ran out of sticks, so I couldn't try the cinnamon suggestion. Looked for my mint and all I could find was a bag of TAZO mint tea. It contained dried spearmint, peppermint and tarragon. OK, worth trying. I cut open the bag and used about 1 tsp. of the dried tea. Sure smelled good sprinkling on top of the lamb/rice mixture! After 15 minutes the rice was a little gritty, so I added another 1/2 cup of water and simmered another 15. The rice softened much better. I halved and gutted 3 green peppers but only had enough meat mixture to fill 5 halves. No problem; I saved the extra half for another cooking adventure. I didn't have chicken stock or broth but I did have a can of CAMPBELL'S Tomato Bisque. I whisked the condensed soup with 1/2 can of water and used that instead of the broth/diced tomatoes. Was I a ??????? for deviating? Only time will tell. Loaded everything in the crockpot because in Phoenix we don't use ovens between May and October. Set for High for 2 hours and the meal came out yummy (without the feta cheese because I'm more of a fontina lover)!

Very good, just make sure you cook the rice till it's done.

SO GOOD. The lamb is what makes this dish. Expensive, but worth it. I didn't really "get" the sauce - it was just tomatoes in chicken broth and didn't really add much to the dish. I would also have liked some cheese, so I think if I make these again, I'll add some feta.

Great recipe, I substituted ground turkey and cauliflower rice, no water and also added a small can of tomato paste to the sauce, turned out delicious!

Good recipe. However, did not call for any garlic! Added two cloves of garlic. Also used 1/3 cup fresh mint (always better than dried) instead of 1/2 tsp of drived.

Very good,have made it three times .Added mushrooms and garlic. You can get creative.