Stuffed peppers are one of those foods that are totally hit-or-miss for me. I either love the hell out of it, or they taste completely gross. There is no in-between on stuffed bell peppers. Fortunately, I found a recipe I really like from mywholefoodlife.com! The flavor isn’t strong, but I did like how the cashew cream sauce tasted when I combined it with the onion, garlic, and quinoa. The stuffing is tasty and I liked how squishy the bell peppers were. It was very easy to use a fork to tear the bell pepper and still get a heaping scoop of filling in one bite, yum!

The peppers are pretty filling, so it may not be usable as a side dish for a larger meal. If you hunted for smaller bell peppers you could probably serve them as a side with a warm salad or some other “lighter” entreé. They would pair very well with soups, stews, chilis, and cornbread muffins!

Ingredients:

Servings: about 5-6, or however many you can fit in your crock-pot!

• 5-6 bell peppers, with tops cut off and seeds removed
• 2½ cups cooked quinoa (made from about ⅔ cup uncooked)
• 1½ cups black beans (or 1 15-oz. can)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ¼ cup onion, diced
• ½ tsp. chili powder
• 1 tbs. of lime juice (juice from half a lime)
• sea salt to taste
• 2 cups cashew cheese sauce (below)

Cashew cheese sauce ingredients: 

• 2 cups raw cashews, soaked & drained (soaked overnight is best, but at minimum 3 hours in warm water)
• 1 cup water (I like to use the water from the soaked cashews)
• ¾ cup nutritional yeast
• ½ tsp. chili powder
• ¼ tsp. onion powder
• sea salt to taste

Notes: Although I like the taste of the peppers as they are, I think you could have some fun with trying different spices. I could see these being really good if they were a little spicy-hot, or maybe using an Italian seasoning.

An alternative cooking method would be to put the stuffed peppers in a dish and bake them in the oven at 350° for 45 minutes.

Directions: 

Cut the tops off and scoop out the guts of the bell peppers if you haven’t already. The filling is enough for 6-7 bell peppers, but I was only able to fit 5 in my slow cooker 😦 So I…kind of overstuffed them a bit. That’s why they sort of exploded in the feature picture…But that’s okay! More pepper guts for me to eat!

Like cozy little friends about to be roasted

Mix all of the cashew cheese sauce ingredients in a blender until it’s as smooth as possible. Mine was still a tiny bit chunky in my cheap blender, but that’s okay!

Combine cooked quinoa, black beans, garlic, onion, spices, lime juice, and the cashew sauce in a large bowl. Mix mix mix.

Stuff each of the peppers with the quinoa-cashew-bean-goop. 

Put a small amount of water in the slow cooker, just enough to cover the bottom is fine. Place the stuffed bell peppers back in the slow cooker.

Decapitated, taxidermied friends

Place the lid on the slow cooker, turn the heat to High, and let them cook for 3 hours. 

Taking these out without having them explode or collapse can be tricky. The best success I’ve had is using two wooden spoons to slightly wedge under the pepper on either side and “carry” it out of the slow cooker. They are still great even if they do fall apart!

Allow them to cool completely before storing them in the fridge.