Stuffed Bell Pepper with Red Wine Sauce

A colleague brought  this at work last week. We had it during our not- so- rushed ( hurrah!) dinner break and it tasted marvellous! 

The meat filling was succulent and tasty, the paprika sweet and tender  and the sauce was really flavourful.  Recipe was included in the endorsement that day, implementation followed soon after that. Evaluation at home was quite positive, follow up request ensued. Now, I'm sharing the love. 😍

The recipe is quite easy,  so do give it a try.

Ingredients:

3-4  red bell peppers
400 g of minced meat ( you can take pork or  beef or  mix both)
1 large onion, finely minced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Brötchen or white bun or  2 slices of white bread soaked in 100 ml milk
a handful of parsley, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce:
about 300 ml red wine
400 ml chicken stock
Suppengemuse / soup vegetable  which is available in Germany groceries
50 g bacon cubes
1 medium sized onion
2 tbsp. tomato puree
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp. smoked paprika
1 tbsp. sugar
2  tsp. dried oregano
a pinch of cumin
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil for frying

°  Wash paprika well and pat dry. Cut into half and take seeds out. Set aside.

°  Mix all filling ingredients together until well combined.

° Now fill the paprika with the minced meat filling.

° Heat olive oil in a pan, fry paprika with meat side first until brown. Flip and fry for few more minutes. Take paprika from the pan. Add a bit of olive oil in the same pan,  saute onion and bacon for about 3 minutes.

° In most grocery stores in Germany, a bundle of what Germans call Suppengemuse  is widely available. It consist of 2-3 medium- size carrots, a slice of celery root, leek and a parsley . It is used many soup or sauce based dishes. In this recipe, I simply chopped the veggies (  save the parley) into pieces and add into the pan.

° Deglaze pan with the red wine, Bring to a boil and lower heat to medium. Stir in tomato puree.

° Put the stuff paprika back in the pan. Add chicken stock. Then, put bay leaves, sweet paprika, oregano, sugar, cumin and season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for about 40 minutes .

° Transfer paprika in your serving dish. You can serve the sauce with the chopped vegetables in it or you can strain the vegetable using a colander and just serve the sauce .

Serve with chopped parley and best eaten with rice of pasta. Simple and delicious!