Prepare Roasted Stuffed Peppers with Chicken and Rice

I remember thinking that colored bell peppers were pricy living in New York at a few dollars per pound, but after moving to Japan, I was shocked to see them selling for $4 each! When I saw them on sale the other day for about a dollar apiece I couldn't help but buy all that was left. Of course it wasn't until I got home with my haul that I started to wonder what I was going to do with all these peppers.

The first thing to come to mind was to make stuffed peppers, but in my experience stuffed peppers look far nicer than they taste. As with most stuffed vegetable dishes, the pepper is just an attractive container to serve what's inside. Given how expensive these little guys are, I wanted to create a dish that would do them right, making them the star of the dish rather than a mere afterthought.

With thoughts of savory paella de pollo and sweet roast peppers bouncing around my head, I decided to stuff my peppers with chicken and rice. I marinated the chicken with lots of garlic and smoked paprika before pan-frying them to a perfect golden brown. Then I used the same pan to sauté onions and bell peppers before adding the rice and stock to make a rich, risotto-like saffron rice. Mixed back together, I stuffed the chicken and rice into bell peppers that were coated in olive oil, salt and pepper. These went in the oven until the peppers were practically melting into the chicken and rice.

The results were good, as in this-could-be-one-of-my-best-dishes-of-2015 good! The savory rice and smoky chicken are a match made in heaven, and together they make the perfect compliment to the sweet and mildly tangy roast pepper. Honestly, I couldn't imagine having a bite of one without the other.

When you're buying the bell peppers for this dish, be sure to look for ones that will sit upright on a flat surface. Also, when you cut the tops off to make the cups, you want to try and cut as close to the top as possible without making the lid fall apart. I learned the hard way with one pepper that wouldn't stand up, and another one with a lid that fell apart.