Stuffed Peppers

For years (all of my life) I hated stuffed peppers and the dried out meat and rice with the overpowering flavor of green bell pepper , yuk! And then one day my DH asked me to make them , "like his mothers" . WHAT! we don't have the same paprika peppers and I have no idea how she makes them. I set out to read, read and read some more, then one day while on vacation in Belgrade him mother made stuffed paprikas and I hovered and watched and tried to learn. I now like stuffed peppers , they are nothing like how my mother in law makes them but they are not that dry stuffing and overpowering green bell pepper flavor.


2 or 3 red or orange bell peppers or if you can find some nice red Hungarian peppers use them
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 oz ground meat. I like to use an equal mix of veal, beef and pork or I will use some sausage I get from a friend who has a pig farm.
1 cup long grain rice
1 egg
1 t. soup spice
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
salt and pepper
2 T. oil or butter
2 T. flour
4 to 6 oz tomato paste
1 cup chicken stock or water

Wash and cut open peppers (sometimes I cut them in half and remove the seeds or I remove the top with the seeds and stuff the pepper whole.
Brown ground meat with chopped onion then add garlic and cook for a few more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in uncooked rice, parsley, egg, soup spice and pepper (the soup spice is salty so I don't add salt).
Preheat oven to 375F
In a sauce pan heat oil and add flour, cook the raw flavor out of the flower then add the tomato paste and stock bring to a boil.
stuff the meat mixture into the peppers, place the peppers in an oven proof dish with a tight fitting lid, ladle the sauce over the peppers and around them. Bake in the oven covered for 1 hour or until rice is cooked and has soaked up the sauce, ladle sauce over the peppers every 15 minutes or so. If need be add more stock to the dish as it bakes.
Serve with plain yogurt.