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