Easy, Juicy, Stuffed Cubanelle Peppers Recipe - Tia Clara (2024)

This stuffed cubanelle peppers recipe has it all: beautiful presentation, lovely flavor, healthful ingredients, and a low-effort, convenient preparation. It is an excellent dish for freezing and finishing later, serving to guests, bringing to a potluck, or just serving for dinner.

By Clara Gonzalez - Last revised Dec 24, 2023. Published Oct 7, 2015.

Why I ❤️ it Recipe Ingredients Preparation

Stuffed cubanelle peppers.

Why I ❤️ it

Although I love Dominican niños envueltos (Dominican cabbage rolls), they are a lot of work, so I decided to make a recipe inspired by those, but with some changes to make them easier and faster. If you love stuffed pepper recipes, then you found your the answer to the question, "what to do with cubanelle peppers?".

Another plus of this recipe is that it is made with brown rice, which is an excellent option foranyone looking to serve something more nutritious. The result is tender cubanelle peppers stuffed with juicy meat and flavorful brown rice. Eat well, eat tastily. This beautiful dish will be a success at the dinner table.

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Learn how to make these wonderful stuffed cubanelle peppers, made with ground chicken (or turkey), brown rice, and a rich assortment of seasonings.

Author: Clara Gonzalez

• Lasagna baking dish
• Mixing bowl
• Large skillet
• Aluminum foil

Ingredients

To make the tomato sauce

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cups tomato, peeled and seeded
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• ¼ teaspoon oregano (dry, ground)
• 1 teaspoon salt, (or to taste)
• ¼ teaspoon pepper (freshly-cracked, or ground), (or to taste)

To make the stuffing

• 1 cup brown rice
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large red onion, grated
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 pound ground chicken breast, [0.45 kg] or ground turkey
• 1½ teaspoon salt, (or more, to taste)
• ½ teaspoon black pepper (freshly-cracked, or ground)
• 1 teaspoon chili flakes or chili powder
• ½ cup of chicken stock

To assemble the stuffed peppers

• 8 cubanelle peppers
• A bunch of basil leaves or fresh parsley or cilantro to garnish

Preparation

Before starting, please make sure you have all the ingredients and utensils ready.

Step 1: Make the tomato sauce

To make thetomato sauce, heat a tablespoon ofolive oilin a skillet over low heat.

Add thetomatoesandgarlic. Cover and simmer until the tomatoes are cooked through. Mash them with a potato masher. Addoregano,salt,andpepper to taste. Set aside.

Step 2: Soak the rice

In a large bowl, soak thericein enough water to cover it, plus an inch. Let it rest for an hour.

Heat the oil over very low heat in a skillet, add theonionandgarlic, and cook and stir until they release their aroma. Stir in thechicken,salt,pepper, andchili powder. Increase heat to medium and simmer covered for five minutes.

Step 3: Cooking the rice

To cook the rice, remove all rice from the water. Add the rice to the skillet and stir. Add 1 cup of the water in which the rice was soaked and a cup of the tomato sauce you prepared previously (set the rest aside), andchicken stock.

Simmer until almost all the liquid evaporates. Cover tightly, lower heat to the minimum, and simmer for five minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Mix in the choppedbasil.

Step 4: Heat oven

Preheat oven to 400 ºF [200 ºC].

Step 5: Clean peppers

To clean thecubanelle peppers, cut a slit in the cubanelle peppers and scoop out the seeds and white parts with a small spoon.

Stuff the peppers with the chicken mixture.

Step 6: Bake

Pour the remaining tomato sauce into a baking pan big enough to accommodate the peppers, or divide it between two smaller pans (which is what I did).

Place the peppers in the tomato sauce. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 25 minutes.

Step 7: Serve

Remove from the oven, garnish with the basil leaves, and serve.

Variations

If you want to try a different stuffed cubanelle peppers version, use ground beef instead of ground chicken, and if you want something a bit richer, you can use Italian sausage stuffing in its place.

Top tips

• If you want to top these stuffed cubanelle peppers with some mozzarella cheese, go right ahead before going into the oven, it goes great in this dish too.
• Anaheim peppers are a good cubanelle pepper substitute in this recipe if you can't find cubanelle peppers, but bear in mind that while cubanelles are not spicy, Anaheim chiles are medium spicy. You can also use sweet bell peppers.
• You can save time by using a jar of your preferred tomato pasta sauce instead of making it from scratch.
• Use leftover rice instead of cooking it from scratch for this recipe, and it will save you most of the cooking time.
• White rice is fine if you don't like brown rice.
• You can store them in the refrigerator stuffed before baking them using an oven-safe airtight container. Bake before serving to finish cooking and reheating.

Serving suggestions

This aji relleno recipe produces a main dish that already contains several elements of a complete meal. The only thing I would add would be a salad, or, better yet, some avocado slices.

Nutritional information

Calories: 553kcal - Carbohydrates: 23g - Protein: 36g - Fat: 35g - Saturated Fat: 14g - Cholesterol: 116mg - Sodium: 1642mg - Potassium: 765mg - Fiber: 2g - Sugar: 13g - Vitamin A: 1030IU - Vitamin C: 9.1mg - Calcium: 587mg - Iron: 2.2mg

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