Red Curry Stuffed Peppers

You all know that one of my absolute favorite things to do is make up recipes. I get inspired by all the different flavors, and love when something turns out well! I recently put my kitchen experimenting hat on when I saw a recipe for stuffed bell peppers.

As you probably know, a traditional stuffed bell pepper is a bell pepper with the top cut off, stuffed with ground beef and rice with usually some sort of tomato soup sauce drizzled on. It is then baked until the meat is cooked though.

When I saw this basic dish on a recipe website, I immediately thought to myself, “What if I change up these flavors?” Since it’s a great concept (meat in a pepper, cooked), there’s no rule that you have to follow the old way of making them! So I went home, decided on some basic flavors, and off I went!

Red Curry Stuffed Peppers

In order to get a slightly healthier dish, I decided to start with chicken instead of ground beef. But to get the same textural effect as ground beef, I minced my chicken breast.



I then started some rice soaking in some water. Since the chicken doesn’t have as much fat as ground beef, there will be fewer juices for the rice to soak up, so I did a little pre-soak.



Next, I chopped up one large shallot.



I threw the chicken and chopped shallot into a metal mixing bowl so I could mix it up with the seasonings.

I began by adding some red curry paste.



I don’t really know what made me think of red curry paste, but for some reason the tomato soup and red bell pepper just sounded like it would go well with a big punch of red curry!

I then added salt, pepper, and smoked paprika.



I set this aside then and grabbed my dear friend, Mr. Campbell’s Tomato Soup.



I mixed up the condensed soup with a can of water, and added a little more of the curry paste directly to the soup.

Then, I drained the rice, and added it to the chicken mixture, along with about 2-3 tablespoons of the curry soup. Again, since the chicken doesn’t provide enough moisture naturally, it’s good to add some extra in to ensure that the rice cooks!



Time to stuff!

Instead of cutting the top off the pepper and doing two full peppers, I cut one large, tall pepper down the middle, creating two halves.



I stuffed the peppers, and placed them in a baking pan with the remaining curry tomato soup.



Stick in a 375 degree oven, and cook until a meat thermometer in the center shows the chicken is done. For us, it was about 40 minutes, but it will vary based on how thick the stuffing is in the pepper, how big the pepper is, etc. Moral of the story, nobody likes raw chicken. Use a meat thermometer!



When we pulled them out of the oven, they looked like this!

We served them over rice, and drizzled some of the tomato soup over the whole dish.



Absolutely delicious! Chris was taken aback at how much he liked the curry flavor with the tomato soup, and I was surprised at how good the chicken was!



Here’s to a kitchen experimenting success story!