Meal Prep Recipe: Ground Turkey Stuffed Peppers

For lunch this week I made some delicious ground turkey stuffed peppers.  My dinner resembled the Siracha Chicken that I made last week, only I changed up the types of vegetables I used (fresh this time) as well as the sauce I used on the chicken.  So for this week I am posting my recipe for the stuffed peppers that I made.  If you have any questions feel free to ask!

Ingredients Needed:

• 10 Bell Peppers (Yes 10, you will be eating two at a time.  I went with five red and five orange, as they are my favorites.  As an additional side note, you may want to make sure that the peppers have a flat bottom, or can stand up on their own, as it will make your life easier later.)
• 3lbs of Lean Ground Turkey (You can substitute any lean ground meat in here, but try to keep it <15% fat)
• 1 bunch of green onions
• 1 sweet yellow onion
• 1 can Hot RO*TEL diced tomatoes and green chilis
• 2 cans reduced sodium black beans
• low sodium spaghetti sauce of choice
• spices of choice

For the Peppers:

• Preheat oven to 400 F
• Line baking sheets with aluminum foil and lightly spray with oil.
• Cut the tops off all of the peppers, clean the insides and remove the seeds. (I prefer to save the tops of the peppers and cut any excess off for some bite size peppers to snack on.)
• Put the peppers top down on the baking sheets and put in the oven for 10 minutes.

For the Filling:

• Heat ~1 tbsp oil in a large skillet.
• While the skillet is getting hot dice half or all of the onion, and all of your green onions (Depends how much you want in your filling.)
• Sautee the onions in the skillet until they are just about cooked and add in the whole can of RO*TEL.
• Continue to heat until you get a nice simmer.
• Take your meat and start to put it in the skillet, crumble it as you do so that you aren't working with giant chunks of ground meat when you mix your filling.
• Season the meat to taste I used Chili Powder, Crushed Red Pepper Flakes, Pepper, Garlic Powder and a touch of Salt.
• Add in some of the green onions and cook until the meat is done.
• Strain the filling and get out all of the grease and excess juices in the bottom of the pan.

 Finishing the dish:

• By now your peppers should be done cooking and sitting on the side, turn your peppers over so that the opening is now face up.
• Spoon in 1 - 2 tbsp of the spaghetti sauce into the bottom of the pepper.
• Fill the pepper up with all the goodness you just cooked! (I tried my best when doing this to keep it lightly packed and the portions even so that I could know how much protein I was getting each day.)
• Top with another spoonful of spaghetti sauce and some green onions.

Viola and you are done!  If you plan on eating the peppers after cooking them, you can put them back into the oven for another 5-10 minutes, but I transferred all of my peppers into my containers for my lunches throughout the week.  I also added 1-1.5 servings of the low sodium black beans (strained and rinsed) for additional carbohydrates and protein for the meal.

As always, stay healthy.