Chicken and Rice Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients used to make Stuffed Peppers and Recipe Variations

There are a few common ingredients used in most stuffed peppers recipes, but for the most part, these options are yours to play around with and customize to your liking to make the best recipe for stuffed peppers for you! Below, I go over the ingredients I used in my version and give a few suggestions for how to customize it.

Peppers – For this recipe, you’re going to need some fresh red, orange or yellow bell peppers. When I made this recipe, the only bell pepper available in the grocery store were the orange bell peppers so that's what you see in the pics! Stuffed green peppers are the traditional way of doing things but they are not my personal preference. Green bell peppers are the least sweet and I find that any other color bell pepper holds extra sweetness. Red bell peppers, orange or yellow ones work most perfectly with the savory chunks of chicken breast.

No matter what color of pepper you use, get those bell peppers stuffed and they make for a scrumptious entrée or appetizer. No matter what you do, stick with bell peppers as they're just the perfect size for stuffing and they have a milder flavor that won’t overpower the other ingredients. Bell peppers make for the best stuffed peppers!

Rice – I used brown rice for this recipe because its texture goes so deliciously well with all the other ingredients. If you'd like, you can definitely try using other kinds of rice (like basmati or long grain white rice) with this recipe as well. If you're trying to cut down on carbs you can replaced the brown or white rice with quinoa or couscous or cauliflower rice.

Do I use cooked rice or uncooked? For this recipe, it's important to use cooked rice rather than uncooked. If you use uncooked rice, it will absorb too much of the liquid from the other ingredients and the filling will be dry. Precooked or leftover rice is best.

Meat/Protein – I used chopped chicken breast in this recipe but you may find a beef filling to be the way you want your peppers stuffed. You can use chopped chicken but you can also try another meat mixture, such as ground chicken, ground beef, beef mixture, ground pork, sausage, Italian sausage or ground turkey.

Do I use pre-cooked meat or raw? For this recipe, the stuffing ingredients, including the meat, are cooked together in a large frying pan before adding them to the peppers. I have seen some recipes that stuff the peppers with raw meat, then cook – I haven't tried cooking it this way myself, so, unfortunately, I can't give an opinion. I'll try this method in a future post, so please stay tuned! 😋

Veggies – I used mushrooms in this recipe, but you could also add carrots, celery, corn, diced tomatoes, etc. Diced zucchini compliments the flavors very well.

Cheese – I loooovvveeee cheese on anything! haha
For this recipe, I put some mozzarella on top of my stuffed bell peppers towards the end of cooking. Parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese and Monterey Jack are popular alternatives but you can try any cheese you like.

Seasonings – Basic seasonings like diced onions and fresh garlic add wonderful flavor to stuffed bell peppers, along with some salt and pepper (ideally ground black pepper), Italian seasoning and smoked paprika. Fresh parsley and fresh basil make for good veggie seasonings. This is the time where you decide if you want a mild or spicy stuffed pepper, spiciness could overpower the other flavors which is a risk but you can use hot sauce or chili flakes to give your stuffed bell peppers a bit of a kick.

Tomato Sauce – Tomato sauce is almost always used in stuffed bell peppers recipes and adds a wonderful flavor to the dish. Marinara sauce is nice in particular but you can choose any kind of pasta sauce or even canned tomatoes.

Seriously though, you can get your bell peppers stuffed with just about any kind of ingredient you can imagine, and it will be an absolute delight. 🙂

I hope you enjoy this peppers recipe as much as my family does, and please feel free to use this recipe as a sort of starting point to make your own stuffed bell pepper creations!

How to make Stuffed Peppers – Overview

You can find the full details and ingredient amount for this recipe at the bottom of the page, but first here is an overview of how to make stuffed peppers.

To begin; prepare the peppers by slicing the tops off and scooping out the seeds and ribs (your peppers can be halved lengthwise too if you prefer) Don’t throw those pepper tops away! You can remove the stems and chop up the pepper tops, and put them right in with the filling to cook with the rest of the ingredients. I don’t like to waste anything. 🙂

Set the “pepper cups” (as my son calls them) into a baking dish with a little water in the bottom. Set this aside while the oven preheats and while you work on making your filling.

Next, in a large skillet on medium high heat, the stuffing ingredients (chicken, diced onion, mushrooms, chicken stock, tomato sauce, garlic, Italian seasoning, paprika, salt and pepper) are cooked in a skillet or frying pan with a little olive oil. Add the rice to the pan and combine. Once your rice mixture filling is ready, you just have to scoop some into each of the peppers. I recommend filling the peppers up about ¾ full, but you can probably get away with overstuffing them a little. 🙂

Nothing wrong with a little extra stuffin’! 😉

Once you have your peppers all filled up with that delicious savory filling, cover your baking dish tightly with some aluminum foil. Now it's time to bake the peppers! When you bake the peppers it’s super important to make sure that the foil is pressed tightly around the edges of the baking dish so that the peppers will cook properly.

Then when the peppers are all finished baking, remove the foil from the baking dish and sprinkle the tops of those delicious looking peppers with some freshly shredded mozzarella cheese. Pop the peppers back into the oven for about five minutes under the broiler setting so that your cheese melts and starts to get nice and bubbly.

MMmmm MMmmm bubbly cheese!

My Peppers wobble and won't stand up.
How do I fix that?

When choosing your peppers at the grocery store, make sure to find some that have a relatively sturdy bottom, so they stand up easily when you cook them in the baking dish.

If you do find that your peppers are wobbly, you can cut a little off the bumpy parts at the bottom of the pepper to even it out, so it will stand up better. Be careful not to slice the bottoms too deep, as creating a hole in the bottom will cause those delicious juices from the filling to seep out. You want to keep the yumminess contained! lol