Folks, I don’t have a recipe. I just make them . . they’re something I’ve made for years. I’ll tell you how I make them, without giving any specific measurements and maybe you can make it work for you.

Someone asked if they get mushy.  They get soft but I wouldn’t consider them mushy.  I cut the top and the seeds out of them and submerge them in boiling water til they’re almost soft, take them out, drain them and let them cool before stuffing them.  I’ve found that stuffing them without any advance prep, and them baking them, they usually don’t get real tender.

Several mentioned lining a dish with plastic wrap, freezing the food in there, then lifting the contents out and wrapping that or putting it in a freezer bag to save on dishes.  I have plenty (more than plenty) of dishes and I never do that.  I just haven’t unpacked everything yet. I pretty much always freeze things in the dish I’m going to bake them in.

There are two ways that I make stuffed peppers.  If  have small to medium peppers, I stuff those so that we each have our own pepper. A lot of times with peppers in my garden, I’ll pick them when they’re fairly small because the plants are so loaded.  If I pick a bunch of small ones and stuff them, then leave some on the plants, they’ll grow larger for other uses.  If I’m buying peppers and they’re priced by the “each”, I’ll get the biggest ones I can find!  If the peppers are huge, I’ll half them and make more like a “layered casserole” instead of stuffing whole peppers.

When making peppers that are individually stuffed, I don’t put as much “tomato” in the mix and then I make a sauce to go over the peppers when I’m baking them.  If the peppers are larger and I’m cutting them in half and making the layered casserole type dish, I mix all the tomato sauce into the stuffing mix.

Here’s basically how I do it.  For the 7 dinners the other night, the ingredients are in parenthesis.

Brown ground meat, drain if necessary.  Add chopped onions and garlic.  (3 pounds ground beef, 2 onions, 3 T. chopped garlic)

Add tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce (I used 1 quart of home canned tomatoes and 1 quart of home canned spaghetti sauce)

Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook til there’s not a lot of liquid remaining.

Stir in cooked rice — however much you want.  (I used 1-1/2 cups raw rice but cooked it before adding it to the mix).  Continue cooking til the liquid is gone.

Spoon a little of this into the bottom of the baking dishes.  Add a pepper or half a pepper that has been steamed or simmered til tender.  Spoon more stuffing mixture on top.  Cool and freeze or bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.