Pork Stuffed Spring Peppers

Pork Stuffed Spring Peppers are a colorful way to entice your taste buds and satisfy your appetite as they are filled with amazing ingredients and spices, then roasted in an oven to bring out the best in flavors and textures!

Song of the day: "Thank you" by Alanis Morissette.

Pork Stuffed Spring Bell Peppers hosting beautiful organic ground pork, milk soaked bread, garlic, parsley, oregano, and a whole lot more, giving you a deliciously substantial dish that is pleasing to the eye and ever so richly delicious either as an appetizer or main. Spring has sprung and these peppers celebrate the brightness of spring.

Pork and peppers, what a combination! The sweetness of the peppers with that beautiful juicy caramelized sugar notes of the roasted pork. It is a match made in heaven.

Growing up I was subjected to a lot of cooking. Both my parents cooked and equally great at it. My mom's specialties were homemade pasta, sweets like cruspelle, pizzelle. My dad's, his famous lemon cookies, whacky chocolate cake, and his wonderfully marinated roasted meats along with incredibly tasting stuffings for artichokes, chicken or turkey, and of course today's recipe of Pork Stuffed Spring Peppers!

Actually, mom and dad worked well together and when they did we were sure to have a feast in flavors. I feel blessed in the way I was raised as I learned so much and developed a most intimate relationship with food and cooking. If anyone were to ask me what it is about food that makes me so passionate about it, I would answer how it makes me feel and how it makes people feel along with the creative aspects of preparing it. There is nothing more pleasurable than seeing your guests at the table conversing, laughing, with those moments of silence as dishes are being eaten broken by sighs, moans, and most wonderful words of encouragement and gratitude. Really, when we think of it what it really boils down to is LOVE! Being loved and giving love. Food brings us back to memories of celebration, being taken care of and even in illness healing! Pretty powerful.

As a teenager, I began to realize that food also brought cultures together and I would watch cooking programs of every nature as in my heart this unity always stirred a deep emotion in the very seat of my soul. I think that is a pretty deep relationship with food and an energy that I carry with me every time I am in the kitchen or back yard grilling area holding those warm and beautiful memories and thoughts as I prepare the food with awareness and gratitude!

Let's get going 

The stuffing

My father Americo taught me that to make a delicious stuffing requires a few things, good quality meat, which I have and I bought from The Italian Centre Shop along with many of the other ingredients. He also told me that you need some moisture to keep it from being too dry and how he did that was to soak some bread in milk and use some oilve oil in the mix. The rest, he would say, is up to you, but two other ingredients he liked to use was olives, and plump golden raisins. I put some fresh basil, dried oregano, and seasoning with fresh cracked black pepper, paprika and some fresh ground coriander.  I did saute the pork a bit as to ensure that it will cook better in the pepper.

Mixing this stuffing is amazing, all those flavors wafting into my nose and my stomach is growling with hunger. This aroma has me thinking that I need to taste the stuffing to make sure it is seasoned right. I take a bit of the stuffing mix and roll it into a ball then flatten it creating a little patty and I throw it into that same saute pan that I cooked the pork all infused with seasoned olive oil. OMG, that aroma is intensifying as the pork caramelizes and in just a few brief moments it is ready for the testing. Yum, juicy and spicy, all those flavors coming together in a rich and flavorful balance. I love those crispy edges of the pork. I can definitely say that the stuffing is ready for the peppers!

I find it quite fun stuffing the peppers that have been cleaned out and are ready to receive this delicious filling. I am so excited, I have the oven pre heated at 375 degrees F.

The kitchen smells amazing, love that smell of roasting peppers and combined with that stuffing getting all brown is truly amazing. I am so happy with how this looks. Those colors look so inviting and that crinkling that happens to peppers along with those char marks is so appealing to me because I know it means smoky-sweet flavor!

Look at that stuffing so golden and brown and those raisins look so plump and full of flavor!

This recipe of Pork Stuffed Spring Peppers would be great for that backyard dinner party. The look of this dish screams rustic and outdoorsy.

I am going in for a taste. Mmmmmm........ the peppers so sweet and that little bit of char adds such a subtle smokiness. The stuffing comes in with this moistness and that bread that had been soaked in milk just fuses with the pork creating this soft incredibly rich sensation in my mouth. I love how the paprika and cracked pepper accentuates the flavor of the sweet pork. The raisins are wonderful as they pop and juice onto my tongue, and the olives break up some of that sweetness with their rich acidic earthy oh so wonderful flavor. The spices of oregano, fresh basil and parsley are tantalizing my taste buds. I love how all the flavors play wonderfully on my palate and how well the housing of that pepper and the way its flavor has steamed its way into the mix not letting itself get lost.

This truly is a wonderful dish and one that will grace our table time and again!

Thank you, Mom, and especially you, Dad, for teaching me to be independent and creative in the kitchen!

To all of you, Happy Spring and let's get cooking!

Enjoy!

Song of the day: "Thank you" by Alanis Morissette.

Pork Stuffed Spring Peppers

★★★★★

5 from 1 review

Print Recipe

Pin Recipe

Pork Stuffed Spring Bell Peppers hosting beautiful organic ground pork, milk soaked bread, garlic, parsley, oregano and a whole lot more giving you a deliciously substantial dish that is pleasing to the eye and ever so richly delicious either as an appetizer or main. Spring has sprung and these peppers celebrate the brightness of spring.

• Total Time: 55 minutes
• Yield: 4-6 servings 1x

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 14 small colored peppers
• 650 g ground organic pork
• 2 cups broken up day old bread
• splash of milk
• ¼ cup of Italian-style bread crumbs
• 1 clove minced garlic
• ½ cup finely chopped white onion
• 1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
• 1 tsp fresh ground coriander
• 1 Tbsp fresh chopped basil
• 1 Tbsp dried oregano
• pinch of fine sea salt, cracked black pepper, paprika
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• ½ cup pitted green Castelvetrano olives, cut in halves
• a handful of golden raisins

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Wash and core all the peppers.
3. In a bowl place broken up day-old bread and pour milk in enough to moisten the bread.
4.  In a saute pan, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil and cook ground pork for about 2-3 minutes.
5. In a bowl mix ground pork with the pan juices, garlic, onion, basil, oregano, parsley, olive oil, Italian-style breadcrumbs, raisins, olives, and finally salt, pepper, parika and coriander.
6. Mix well with your hands until mixture is well incorporated.
7. Stuff each pepper with the mixture until it is billowing over the top of the pepper.
8. Place all the suffed peppers in a well oiled rectangular baking dish.
9. Place in middle rack of the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until you see the tops start to brown and peppers start to char a bit.
10. Take out of the oven and serve.

Enjoy!

Notes

1. Cook time may vary due to different ovens.
2. If you don't like olives or raisins you can leave them out and use what you wish.
3. I used small peppers but if you have large pepper this would work too but your yield would probably be half.

• Author: Loreto
• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 35 minutes
• Category: Meat
• Method: Roasting
• Cuisine: Mediterranean

Recipe Card powered by

Loreto

When I am not cooking, I enjoy playing musical instruments, singing, writing. I have learned over the years to live in gratitude and enjoy the moment.