Stuffed Banana Peppers With Bacon

We had an abundance of Banana Peppers this year, so I wanted to find a recipe that I could use to make stuffed peppers. I turned to Instructables for an idea and found one by Sam DeRose - Healthy Stuffed Peppers. I liked the method and ingredients he used, so I modified the recipe to suit my taste. They might night be quite as healthy as Sam's but they are good!

12 Banana Peppers

6 Strips of Bacon

1 pound Of Ground Turkey (Beef or Pork will also work!)

2 pounds of Tomatoes

Small Onion

1 Tablespoon of Minced Garlic

Two Carrots

1 Cup Uncooked Quinoa

Olive Oil or Cooking Spray

Salt

Pepper

Seasoned Salt

Follow the directions on the package. I put 1 cup of Quinoa into 2 cups of boiling water. I simmered it covered for 15 minutes and then let is sit for 15 minutes or so.

Diced the onion and peeled and chop the carrots. Peel the tomatoes and cut them into small cubes. Put a little Olive oil in a skillet and warm up the pan. Add the onions, Minced Garlic, Carrots and Tomatoes. Stir it together and simmer it for a period of time. I allowed it to simmer while I cooked the Meat and prepared the Peppers.

This step is pretty simple. Cut the end off the pepper. I use a butter knife to go around the inside of the pepper to remove the seeds and inner structure. Use the knife to scrape out any remaining seeds. Rinse out the inside of the pepper and stack them in a deep loaf pan.

Fry up six or so strips of bacon in the skillet. Remove the Bacon, put them in a bowl with a paper towel and drain the grease out of the skillet. Brown the ground turkey in the same skillet used to fry the bacon. You may as well get all that good bacon flavor infused in the ground turkey.

Once the Ground meat is browned, Add the vegetables and the Quinoa and stir it all together in the skillet. Add salt, pepper and spices and mix. Turn off the heat and let it sit for a couple of minutes.

Use a spoon to add the Ground meat vegetable mix into the pepper. Put in couple spoonfuls of the mix and use the spoon to tamp it down into the bottom of the pepper. You only want to fill it about 1/4 full at this time. Now take a half of a strip of bacon and put into the pepper along the side. Now fill it the rest of the way with your vegetable mixture, putting in as much as you can without breaking the pepper. Stack them up vertically in a loaf or bread dish.

Put them in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or so. I put the dish on a cookie sheet when baking since they overhung my dish somewhat. I pulled them out when they were just starting to get a little wrinkly.

Once cooked, serve and eat.

Since we made quite a few, I made up some lunch containers with 2 in each container. I froze them for my lunches during the week. They are easy to heat up and make great leftovers.

Good Luck and enjoy!