Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers

by Sabrina Snyder

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27 Comments

5 from 10 votes
8 servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 55 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
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Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers are a bold and easy weeknight dinner with hearty, saucy Southwest flair! And they’re even better the next day!

I LOVE Stuffed Peppers because they’re easily portioned, quick to reheat, and kids actually enjoy eating them! Tell me when else you can convince your kid to eat half a bell pepper! Plus, I get to use my favorite Homemade Enchilada Sauce that I make in giant batches and freeze.

Sabrina’s Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers Recipe

Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers may cause you to send me an email thanking me for your favorite work lunch EVER. They’re so easy to make in bulk (I triple the recipe and bake them off at once, then freeze in individual servings), and they heat perfectly. You will sit down to a filling, delicious lunch that would make all your coworkers who went to Chipotle jealous.

Recipe Card

Dinner, then Dessert

Tex Mex Stuffed Peppers Recipe

Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers are a bold and easy weeknight dinner with hearty, saucy Southwest flair! And they're even better the next day!
Yield 8 servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 55 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Course Dinner
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder
beefy, cheesy, spiced veggie boats in a baking pan
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Ingredients
 

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 3 tablespoons taco seasoning , or one packet + 1 teaspoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 cup rice cooked
  • 1 cup salsa
  • 1 cup corn
  • 1 cup black beans
  • 4 bell peppers split in half and de-seeded , through the stem
  • 1 cup enchilada sauce
  • 8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese , divided

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  • Add the ground beef to a large cast iron skillet (this browns very well) and brown until a deep brown crust appears before breaking the beef apart and cooking for 5-6 minutes.
  • Add in the taco seasoning, rice, salsa, corn and black beans stirring well.
  • Scoop the mixture into the bell pepper halves and top with enchilada sauce and half the cheese.
  • Bake for 45 minutes in a covered pan.
  • Uncover, top with remaining cheese and put back in the oven for 5 minutes to melt the cheese.

Nutrition

Calories: 337kcal | Carbohydrates: 22g | Protein: 21g | Fat: 19g | Saturated Fat: 9g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 6g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 67mg | Sodium: 860mg | Potassium: 521mg | Fiber: 4g | Sugar: 7g | Vitamin A: 2626IU | Vitamin C: 80mg | Calcium: 232mg | Iron: 2mg

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About this Recipe

This recipe can also be a second round meal. Did you make Taco Tuesday at home? Maybe you have ground beef and rice? All you need to add is some frozen corn and black beans to the mixture with just a few ingredients for a whole new meal!

Ideas to Serve

To have the best work lunch ever place one or two of these cooked stuffed peppers in a glass microwavable tupperware. Scoop as much sour cream as you’d like into a small ziploc bag, add 2 lime wedges and a couple of packets of hot sauce to the container.

When heating, remove the lime, sour cream, and hot sauce from the container and add a couple of tablespoons of water to the tupperware and cover with a wet paper towel before microwaving for 2-3 minutes. Snip the end off the sour cream Ziploc and squeeze it over the peppers, squirt with the lime, and top with hot sauce as desired.

Your coworkers will ask you to make lunch for them too. Trust me, in my previous life, before being a chef, I ran a small catering service for coworkers for a few months when they got jealous of my lunches.

Alternative Cooking Techniques

Microwave

This trick will cut down on cooking time if you don’t have to cook rice in the peppers. You’ll still have to cook the meat separately. Once that’s done, clean and cut peppers, then cover them with a wet paper towel on a plate and cook for 4-5 minutes while preparing the stuffing. You just cut your cooking time in half.

Stovetop

The primary thing here is to keep liquid in the pot and to keep it covered to help steam the bell peppers. Depending on the filling you could even be done in 15-20 minutes with the direct heat of a stovetop.

Slow Cooker

Add all the ingredients as you would below, but I suggest cutting the tops off the peppers and stuffing from the top of the pepper. Cook on low for 4 hours.

Variations

  • Use ground chicken, pork, or turkey in place of ground beef. Just add a bit of fat to the pan to make up for less fat in the meat.
  • Use other vegetables – I’ve used any extra vegetables I may have in the fridge that are nearing the end of usefulness, even including grape tomatoes. Just season them well with the taco seasoning.
  • Instead of using enchilada sauce use additional salsa for a less spicy option.
  • Mix up the cheese – a nice cotija, jack or pepper jack would also be delicious.

If you like these stuffed peppers you may want to check out these amazing Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers too.

More Delicious Stuffed Peppers

collage with stuffed peppers in a pan and title in the center

These photos were in a previous version of this post

Mexican Stuffed Peppers
Stuffed Peppers in Pan Tex Mex Style

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. I’ve made this 4 or 5 times. I use ground turkey instead of beef. Since it’s just my husband and I, I freeze the leftover filling, and it’s just as good the second time around. We eat with a side of chips and salsa. Delicious, thank you.

    Reply

  4. This recipe is absolutely fantastic, the only change I made, was using Ancho Chili powder because that is all I had available at the time. Very easy recipe that takes little time to create amazing.

    Reply

  6. I love how you give tips of how to make your recipes better. They are so helpful!! And every recipe that I have made, has always been good! Thank you!!

    Reply

  8. this recipe looks amazing! can you premake the stuffing the night before, and fill the peppers the next night for dinner?

    Reply

    1. I wouldn’t recommend that. By the time the peppers cook through, you risk dry meat from going from cooked to chill to cooked, and mushy rice from sitting in the sauces all night.

      Reply

  9. You indicated that these could be made in a crock pot. However in the instructions you did not indicate how long they would have to be in the Crock-Pot or if there’s any way that you would prepare them differently than if you were preparing them in the oven. Just wondered what the difference would be and how you would prepare them

    Reply

  10. So Good, I made this last night and followed the recipe as written. It was full of flavor and my entire family loved it! I had a ton of filling left over so next time I will cut it in half.

    Reply

    2. I made these this past week with ground chicken and also had extra filling. I used the extra filling to make stuffed zucchini and it was another hit! Thanks for the recipe!!

      Reply