Stuffed Pepper Soup

It’s getting cold. Can you feel it? Soon it will be Autumn and my favorite time of year: Soup season!

I could wax rhapsodic about my love for soup for many an age. I love soup of all kinds (so long as the amount of celery that ends up floating in the stock is limited -- but that’s an argument for another day). The one I'm about to present to you is one of my all time favorites.

I have a special relationship with stuffed pepper soup (and definitely more memories surrounding this little number than actual stuffed peppers). Many a chilly fall / winter day has been warmed by this soup, but there is one fall day in particular:

It was my junior year of college and having lived in a dorm on a meal plan for the past two years, my cooking skills left something to be desired. Not to mention the fact that college was a rough one emotionally. So, one fall day when things had been particularly rough (though this was still before the time of the bats), my mother showed up with several bags full of ingredients and we got down to making stuffed pepper soup.

Since then, stuffed pepper soup has been on of "our things". Whenever I come home during the fall or winter holidays, we tend to make it at least once. Just last week, she came up to attend a Michigan football game and we made yet another batch.

[ignore the beans; we also made chili]

And so, since this is one of my most requested recipes (especially by my dear friend Jill), I've decided to share its wonderment with you.

Stuffed Pepper Soup

[via mi madre]

[Ingredients]

2 lb ground beef

1 green bell pepper

1 can tomato sauce

1 diced tomato

2 cubes beef bouillon

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 T soy sauce

2 cups cooked rice

[What to do]

1. Brown beef over medium heat
2. Add peppers and saute for 3 minutes
3. Stir in rest of ingredients (sans rice). Reduce heat to love, cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes
4. Stir in rice and heat through
5. Be sure to add some Parmesan  and romano cheese to the top when you serve.

Bisnonna's Stuffed Green Peppers [The Cookbook]

My own memories of the illustrious stuffed pepper are fuzzy at best. I remember my mother making them and I remember them being wrapped, trayed, and put into the freezer. I think they were a cookout, party, or large gathering food of some kind because I recall nothing about them making an appearance at our dinner table. Honestly, I’m not sure if that makes this a great place to start or an awful one. Nevertheless...




It all starts with the bell pepper (also referred to as peperoni in Italian and mango in certain parts of rural Ohio), the least spicy variety of Capsicum annuum. Don’t get me wrong, I love my spicy chiles, but there is something subtle and lovely about a simple green pepper. Then there’s the way they smell...

It’s one of my favorite smells: a fresh bell pepper. When we would go to the farm market or some other produce stand, my father would always smell the bell peppers. That’s how he would choose which ones were right for our purposes. I don’t know if my mother believes him, but I do. Bell peppers smell crisp with a light bitterness that just makes me happy for some reason. Maybe that’s why I like Cabernet Sauvignon.



Despite prepping for a lengthy endeavor, my Bisnonna's Stuffed Peppers turned out to be much simpler than anticipated. I modified her recipe a little: a sin, I know, but I suspected this will happen a lot as many of the recipes do not include exact amounts or really any instructions at all. My modifications here are mainly an issue of experimentation.

And of course there's that rebellious streak. Bisnonna's first instruction is to cut the peppers in half and clean them out. I also remember my mother cutting them in half so that they looked like little boats. I instead cut the tops off because I am not very good at following instructions.

The experimentation carried over into the rice (brown and made in a rice cooker) and to the stuffing mix, to which I added bread crumbs, basil, and red pepper flakes.

The one rule I did not dare to flaut, however, was topping with a little more sauce and some Romano cheese. Madre told me this was incredibly important and I agree.

Stuffed Green Peppers 

Via The Cookbook

Bisnonna writes: 

Cut in half and clean out your green peppers, set them aside. Make your rice according to the box's directions. Brown an onion and a little bit of garlic in some oil, add some ground beef and simmer. Mix this with the rice and add a little bit of sauce. Put this into your green peppers, top with some more sauce and a little bit of Romano cheese. Put them on cookie sheets and bake in a 350 degrees over for about 45 mins. or until tender.

Madre adds:

Remember when you eat these, EAT THE PEPPERS TOO. Grandma used to yell at us kids because we'd eat only the stuffing. One time she had left over stuffing and she told us to eat that. Well, it didn't taste the same.

[I'm not sure what she was on about honestly. It makes a pretty good tortilla dip.]