Recipe: Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa and Ground Turkey

I’m always on the hunt for new, healthy recipes.  I was paging through Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood and happened upon a recipe for stuffed peppers…a pretty unhealthy looking one.  Looking at it, I knew I could easily make some changes to make them healthy, and here’s the result!  (Hers was also more of a Mexican flavored stuffed pepper and I made mine Italian!)  It makes a lot of filling – I was overfilling the peppers and still had some leftover, so I may make less quinoa next time.  You can definitely swap out the seasonings as needed and make it your own!

Stuffed Peppers
Serves 12

Ingredients:

• 6 bell peppers (whatever color you like), seeded and but in half lengthwise (top to bottom)
• 1 1/2 c. uncooked quinoa
• 2 lbs. raw ground turkey
• 1 cup diced onion
• 3 cloves garlic (although I felt I could’ve added more)
• 2 cans diced tomatoes (I used the ones with garlic and onion for more flavor)
• 8 oz. part-skim mozzarella cheese, shredded (or whatever italian cheeses you like)
• salt and pepper to taste
• italian seasoning to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a saucepan, cook the quinoa according to package directions.  If you have some leftover already cooked, you could use that as well.  This makes about 3 cups of quinoa.
3. In a skillet, saute the onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes, then add the ground turkey.  Season with salt, pepper, and italian seasoning and brown through.  Drain if needed (this depends on the fat content of the meat you buy).
4. Add the cans of tomatoes to a saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer of 5 minutes.  You can add additional seasoning here if you’d like.  Remove from heat.
5. In a large bowl, combine the quinoa, turkey, and tomatoes.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and mix until blended.
6. Place the bell peppers skin side down in a 13x9x2 pan (I ended up using another pan because they wouldn’t all fit in one).  Divide the filling between the pepper halves.
7. Cover the pan with foil and bake for 40 minutes.
8. Remove the foil, sprinkle with the mozzarella cheese, and bake an additional 5 minutes, until the cheese melts.

**adapted from Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood**