These low carb, old fashioned stuffed peppers are easy to make, family friendly, and have all of that flavor of the ones your grandma made without the carbs OR the calories. Must be magic, right?
For this recipe you’ll need: Bell peppers, ground beef, onion, cauliflower, hemp hearts, tomato sauce, lemon, dill weed (dried), garlic powder, and smoked paprika.
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I love old fashioned stuffed peppers. You know, nothing fancy at all. It is one of those Depression Era recipes that I grew up on — both of my parents were teens during the Depression years and we had a lot of those kinds of foods in my house. Comfort food, for sure.
First of all, there’s all that flavor! When you bake the filling in the pepper the filling soaks up all of the flavorful juices that seep out of the peppers during cooking. Every bit is a combination of sweet peppers, tomato, beef, and starch — and the starch is what kills me every time… because… carbs.
I’ve made stuffed peppers with just the ground beef and a little tomato sauce but they aren’t the same at all. I was determined to come up with something that gave me that starchy goodness!
Cauliflower didn’t work all by itself. It just doesn’t have the exact right texture. It’s not chewy, it doesn’t really soak up the flavor during baking, and it wasn’t quite right. Hmmm…. Then I tried adding hemp hearts to the cauliflower and there it was. That chewy kind of starchy texture that soaked up the flavor. Best of all?
No carbs.
Table of Contents
Tips for Perfect Low Carb Stuffed Peppers
- You can use any color sweet peppers that you want. I chose green for these old fashioned stuffed peppers because that’s how Mom made them (and it’s what was available at Costco the day I went). A combination of red, green, yellow, and orange makes for a pretty presentation.
- These freeze well. You can make the whole batch for yourself and then freeze them in individual portions for when you want to eat them.
- These store in the refrigerator just fine for up to 5 days. They may be fine longer but I’ve never been able to get past 5 days with them.
- You can leave the peppers whole, cut off the tops, clean them out, and fill them if you want to. It works just the same. I used halves because I can’t eat a whole one.
Nutrition Info
Here’s the old fashioned stuffed peppers recipe.
Old-Fashioned Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients
- 12 Bell peppers
- 1 pound ground beef
- Salt and black pepper
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 4 cups finely chopped cauliflower
- 1 cup hemp hearts
- 1 14- ounce can tomato sauce
- 1/3 cup water
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon dill weed
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Instructions
- Wash peppers, cut in half lengthwise, and clean out seeds.
- Set aside.
- Brown the ground beef and onion in a large, heavy frying pan with a little salt and pepper.
- Add the remaining ingredients.
- Simmer until the mixture is cooked and tender.
- Remove from heat.
- Spray two 13×9 inch baking dishes with cooking spray.
- Place 6 pepper halves, hollow side up, in each dish.
- Fill each pepper half with about 1/2 cup of the meat mixture.
- Use 1/2 cup of water to rinse out the tomato sauce can, and pour this water into the dish so that there is a shallow layer of tomato-y water on the bottom.
- Cover the dish with foil.
- Bake at 350F for 1 hour.
- Uncover and bake 10 minutes more.
Loved these. Real comfort food and the hemp hearts work so well as an alternative to the typical rice for filler. You have made a hemp heart believer out of me…love it in your batter crusts as well. I agree….adds a nice bready feel to dishes. This would make a great stuffing for small eggplant in middle eastern dishes as well.
Thank you !
What a creative way to stuff peppers! They really are the perfect shape for stuffing, so I don’t know why I don’t make them myself!
You should! I love stuffed peppers so I was glad to come up with a recipe that is low carb.