Happy New Year ForensicBBQ crew! Figured I’d kick 2022 off with one of my favorite dishes. I’ve made this one for a long time now and it tastes great each and every time. Two things I haven’t done yet with this recipe that I’m doing this time around: Using the leftover cayenne pepper sauce I made and substituting time in the oven for time in the RecTeq. Everything else is about the same so let’s look at what we have!
As always, recipe below for those in a hurry – but keep reading for the story and all them pictures!
The Prep Table
We have a lot of ingredients going on here. The basic idea is we’re making a tomatoey, meaty rice filling, shoving it into a green pepper and cooking until it’s all blended nicely. It’ll have that Louisiana love from my cajun blend, that Zatarain’s – and of course some cayenne pepper sauce. First things first, let’s get those veggies prepped.
We’re going to get a large pot of water boiling so we can get some pre-cooking on this peppers (blanched). Once boiling, pop the peppers in for only like 3 minutes then put them on some paper towel to dry.
That prep part isn’t that fun, the fun is watching all of it get combined. But we needed the peppers softened for their trip to the RecTeq. That was the only major part of the prep that we had to get done. Everything else is throw and go. So let’s go!
The Process
Fill that kitchen with the beautiful odor of sautéed onion/garlic. Once that onion is smelling good and looking clear, get that garlic in there and throw that seasoning on there. Let it cook up for a bit and lets get the meats in there.
I love this part because it’s “Add ingredient. Cook. Add some more. Cook”. Go go go. And its fun watching it all come together too. Once that shrimp is cooked, sprinkle that rice all around and get the liquids ready to pour.
Make sure your pan is deep enough to hold all this. I shrunk down the next couple pictures cause once we add the tomato sauce/chicken broth, we’re letting it go for about 25 minutes until it thickens up. You can see how the rice cooks, how the liquids cooks out and what we’re left with.
Add Chicken Broth & Tomato Sauce 
5-8 Minutes later 
8-15 minutes later 
16-25 minutes
Looks phenomenal at this point. Take your spoon and try a little bit and know how good it is. Here’s an optional step for those spice hounds: Get some of that Crystal/Franks/Louisiana hot sauce in there. I did NOT at this point because I wanted to get my CPS (Cayenne Pepper Sauce) on there at the end, but it’s your cook, make it your own!
I had the RecTeq holding steady at 325 degrees, burning my favorite pellets – Lumberjack Char-Hickory. We weren’t getting crazy smoke at 325, but we were still getting a wood fire.
The Result
The RecTeq was hot, so let’s put the peppers in there for another 20ish minutes. It was already pretty late at this point, and I was hungry. But you can see at 325 how we’re not getting much smoke in there.
When the filling starts to get that crispy look, let’s get ’em out and plated.
I don’t know how y’all eat the stuffed pepper, but I break it down. Half it, open it up, and splash that sauce/lemon on there. Lookin’ something like this:
This was what I remembered. Give this one a try for sure. That lemon gives it a little bit of a nice hit, that Cayenne Pepper Sauce of mine has been used twice now (Wings and now this). Thanks again to Heidi for the recipe (linked below). Enjoy y’all!
The Recipe
Cajun Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients
- 6 Green Bell Peppers
- 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 Onion Diced
- 2 Cloves Garlic Minced
- 1/2 Tsp Oregano
- 1 Tbsp Cajun Seasoning
- 3/4 Lb Shrimp
- 1.5 Links Andouille Sausage
- 1 Cup Rice Uncooked
- 2.5 Cups Chicken Broth
- 8 oz Can-Tomato Sauce
- 1 Lemon Wedges
- Hot Sauce Always hot sauce.
Instructions
- Preheat RecTeq to 325.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Remove tops from the peppers and scrape the ribs/remove the seeds. Blanch in boiling water for about 3 minutes and drain on paper towel.
- Heat olive oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Saute onion until translucent. Stir in garlic and seasonings (oregano, cajun, black pepper)
- Toss in the meats (shrimp & sausage) and cook until shrimp turns pink, 5 minutes. Add the uncooked rice, and cook for about a minute.
- Pour in chicken broth and tomato sauce. Cook until thickened, about 15 to 20 minutes. Fill peppers with stuffing mixture, and place in baking dish.
- Pop it in the RecTeq for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the fillings looked baked. Squeeze a lemon wedge and drizzle the hot sauce!