Посни полнети пиперки - Poivrons farcis végétaliens - Vegan gevulde paprika's

Recipe time! Today I want to show you how I make vegan stuffed peppers. Although I don’t use my grandmothers recipe (if she even had one), I do try to recreate the taste of her dish. I’m able to do that without her recipe as I stood next to her stove for years when I was small. I hope you will be able to follow this recipe along side with me now via this video.

It’s a very simple dish, as it doesn’t ask for a lot of fancy ingredients. This is a slow cooked meal though, so you should plan some time ahead for it to be ready on time. It doesn’t need much of your actual time, but it requires a lot of stove and oven time.

I also want to warn you that this isn’t a recipe, where you just measure out the ingredients and taste at the end of the road, it requires taste tests during cooking. Many of the ingredients listed below, taste differently coming from different sources (bouillon, hungarian red pepper, etc). Consider yourself warned. Ok, let’s go!

Vegan Macedonian stuffed peppers

Ingredients

  • sweet peppers (I used 5)
  • risotto or dessert rice (I used 3 cups)
  • chopped onions (I used 6 small ones)
  • chopped carrots (I used 2)
  • garlic (I used 2 cloves)
  • 1L vegetable bouillon (I used Vegeta in warm water)
  • vegetable slices (I used 5 parsnip slices)
  • herbs (I used dried rosemary, bay leaf and fresh parsley)
  • spices (I used sweet Hungarian red pepper, black pepper and salt)
  • apple cider vinegar
  • sunflower oil
  • salt to taste

Step-by-step

Use a casserole or a dutch oven as a pan. Sauté the chopped onions in 6 spoons of warm sunflower oil. Stir. Add more oil if needed. Add the chopped carrots and garlic. Stir again. Now you can add the rice. When the rice has turned translucent, you can add the bouillon. The idea is, that you work quickly from now on as you don’t want to rice to boil in your bouillon. Add the herbs (keep the bay leaf aside) and the spices. Stir. Taste, add salt and pepper, taste, add apple cider vinegar. Taste, add two spoons of sunflower oil.

Take your (coreless) bell peppers and fill them 4/5 with your mix, close them off with the vegetable slices. Set them aside. At this point you want to increase the volume of this sauce. First add some more sweet red pepper powder, this will give your sauce more color and definitely more flavour. Add the bay leaves at this point as well. Place the stuffed peppers on top of the sauce. Add some more water (about 1/2L), up to just below the surface of the bell peppers. Sprinkle one table-spoon of sunflower oil on top.

Bring to a boil and leave it to cook for an hour on a low fire. Close with lid. Check every 15 minutes and turn the peppers around every time you check. After one hour the pepper should be soft and tender and the rice will be fully cooked. Sprinkle once more a table-spoon of sunflower oil on top of your dish.

You can now place the pan (without the lid) into a pre-heated oven. I turn my oven on 220 degrees with warmth from all sides, but also a grill on top. After 30-45 minutes your dish should be ready to eat. Let it cool down a bit. It’s very hot at this point.

Serve your stuffed peppers with fresh white bread (to dip in the sauce) or thick yoghurt.

Watch the video here and/or follow me here.