Stuffed Pepper Soup

Stuffed peppers are so yummy, but buying enough peppers to serve everyone can get expensive. I found a recipe for stuffed pepper soup that had all the flavors of stuffed peppers but with fewer peppers. It also eliminated the chore of actually stuffing the peppers with the meat and rice filling, too. Anytime a recipe can be made easier is fine by me! And if you'll look at the original recipe, you'll see that I did some tweaking. As usual.

Here's what you need:

1 lb ground beef or turkey
1 small onion, diced
2 green peppers, chopped
4 cups beef broth
2 cans (15 oz each) tomato sauce
1 teas Italian seasoning
1 teas salt
1/2 teas black pepper
1/2 teas garlic powder
2 cups cooked rice (I used brown rice)

In a large pot, start browning the ground meat. After a few minutes, add the onions and peppers so they can cook in the juices. When the meat is no longer pink, drain.

Add the remaining ingredients except the rice. Bring to a low boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes until peppers have reached desired tenderness. Stir in the rice and heat through.

The kids devoured this! And it's a good thing, too, because this recipe makes a lot of soup. We had enough for leftovers the next day. But like any soup with rice, it thickened up quite a bit. I added a little water to thin it out and a few shakes of the spices so the flavor wasn't watered down too much. This soup is definitely a winner!