Everyone has their go-to meals that you make again and again, probably because they are easy but mostly because everyone loves them. You wouldn’t think that a stuffed pepper recipe would be a hit in a house with 6 kids but this recipe is always a hit and the flavors are amazing.

I have a few kids who leave out the pepper and just eat the filling but I recognize that kids go through phases so I’m completely fine with that. They’ll eat the peppers later.

I LOVE stuffed peppers but my favorite stuffed pepper recipe is meat free and my husband won’t eat it without a side of steak. In an effort to simplify my meal planning I had to find an easy, healthy stuffed pepper recipe that could stand on it’s own.

Enter this husband-friendly and heart healthy stuffed pepper recipe!

Every time I make this my kids ask for seconds and the leftovers are so awesome that I hide them in the fridge so I can claim them the next day.

Stuffed Pepper Ingredients

• 1 pound of ground beef (try ground turkey or chicken to make it even healthier)
• 3 large bell peppers
• 1 jar of salsa – Get creative with this. The salsa really makes the dish so change things up by trying a variety of salsas
• 1 cup of cooked quinoa
• 1 cup cooked brown rice
• 1/2 diced onion
• 1/2 pepper, diced
• 2 cups of fresh spinach
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 TBSP of Black Pepper

Preparation

Brown your ground beef in a large pan. I like my Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron for this — not sponsored in any way I just really love my pans. When your meat is mostly cooked, add in the diced onion and garlic. I had some delicious green garlic and green onion on hand from our local CSA but anything will do. I like throwing the veggies in after my meat is cooked because that allows me to rinse the extra fat off my meat after cooking if I want to — most of the time I just leave it because I go with pretty lean meat — and I can also avoid using much oil or butter to get things going since the juice from the meat comes out as it cooks.

Chop up 1/2 a pepper and any other veggies you have on hand. This adds some great color to the filling and it’s fun to use a different color pepper then you are stuffing.

I had some sliced pepper matchsticks on hand from dipping in hummus so I just chopped those up so I could avoid waste. Since these will finish cooking in the oven you can go easy on them here.

Add your pepper and any other spices you want to throw in, then mix in your cooked rice and cooked quinoa.

Stir in your salsa then carefully stir in your fresh spinach. This doesn’t take long to wilt up so you probably want to have your peppers prepped and ready to go by this point.

To prepare your peppers, rinse them well then slice vertically through the stem. This gives you the biggest opening to load your peppers up with plenty of filling.

Tear out the white membranes with your fingers.  You don’t have to get it all but get as much as you can so your dish won’t taste bitter.

Lay out your pepper halves on a baking sheet that you have drizzled in olive oil. Fill each pepper with about 1/2 cup of filling, depending on how large your peppers are.

Top each pepper with cheese. If you want to cut calories a bit you can go easy on the cheese or eliminate it completely. If you are concerned about getting your kids to eat it . . . cover that sucker with as much cheese as you can fit on it.

Bake at 375° for about 35 minutes. The peppers should be tender. If you want to avoid the cheese getting too crispy, you can cover these loosely with foil.

Serve immediately. You can serve these over a bed of greens, with a baked potato, or on their own. Enjoy!