Monday, October 10, 2016

Halloween Stuffed Peppers, or Pepper-o-Lanterns

Pepper-o-lanterns! I made a fanged fiend and a kitty cat!

How adorable are these Halloween stuffed peppers?! These boo-tiful babies are so fun and easy to make that I wanted to share my quick recipe for them here. Also, these don't have to be just for Halloween - when you are really missing the autumn season, these are perfect to make and you can find the ingredients at any time of year! And, as always, they are all vegan!

These vegan pepper-o-lanterns use only a few ingredients, can be customized to whatever your palate desires, and are fast to prepare, which means they are perfect for busy October nights where you just want to kick back and watch some scary movies with your boo. All you need is a few ingredients and about 20 minutes to make these precious pepper-o-lanterns! Find the recipe below:

My ingredients assembled! Can you tell I shop at Trader Joe's a lot?!

Ingredients:
  • 2-4 bell peppers (orange works best, but I like the stripey ones I used, too!)
  • 1 package of Trader Joe's Beefless Ground Beef (or other vegan ground "beef",like Beyond Meat Crumbles or Gardein Beefless Ground)
  • Approximately 1 cup cooked quinoa (use more or less to your liking, or just leave it out altogether)
  • Vegan cheese of your choice (I used Trader Joe's Vegan Mozzarella)
  • Optional: chopped up veggies of your choice, like mushrooms, bell peppers, carrots, etc. - you can also add hot sauce or even taco seasoning to spice things up!
Directions: 

Wash and gently pat dry the bell peppers. Cut off the tops of the bell peppers and save them (you'll use them later as toppers). Scoop out the seeds and clean out the insides of the bell peppers. Then, using a small knife carefully carve jack-o-lantern faces into the peppers. Set the carved peppers aside.

Cut off about an inch or so off the tops of the peppers, like above, but save
the tops for later.

Prepare the vegan Beefless Ground Beef in a skillet, following the package directions. Once that is heated through, add some of the cooked quinoa and stir until incorporated. When the mixture is toasty, scoop into the hollow pepper-o-lanterns! Add one scoop, pat down, then sprinkle some vegan cheese on it. Add another layer of the beefless and quinoa mix, then another sprinkle of cheese. Keep going until you get to the top of the pepper. Top with the pepper caps (if you need to, you can secure them with toothpicks) and serve! 

Spoon the beefless grounds and quinoa mix into the cleaned out peppers, then 
add a sprinkle of vegan cheese between each spoonful!

If you want to cook the peppers a bit to soften them up, you can pop into a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for about 15 - 20 minutes (be warned though, the faces you carved may sag a bit!). 

Eeeeeeek I love my fanged pepper-o-lantern!

Gimme dinner right meow! I even cut out little cat ears and put them on the
pepper using toothpicks!

Until next time, stay spooky!

4 comments:

  1. I agree! Love these, particularly the kitty. Your instructions make these seem easy enough -- I am definitely making these this year! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

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