Welcome back to our new series, What The Heck Do I Do With This? Every other week, we’ll help you put a single ingredient from your Misfits Market box to delicious use. This week’s spotlight: Green bell peppers!
Here’s a fun fact: Whether sweet or hot, all peppers start off as green peppers. The color has to do with the time that it was picked, with green ones being the less mature of the crop.
Green bell peppers are typically slightly bitter with a grassy flavor, making them the perfect candidate for frying, baking, sautéing, and even grilling. Try these seven delicious takes on these green guys, and let us know about any other favorite bell pepper recipes in the comments!
Kebabs
With summer just around the corner, one of the best ways to make use of this veg is to skewer it for grilling alongside some onion, your protein of choice, and squash. Kitchen Swagger’s easy grilled kebab recipe is definitely worth a spin the next time you fire up the BBQ.
The best part about kebabs is how customizable they are. For our own Misfits Market recipe, we went with onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, and lean chicken. You can really toss anything onto your skewers—let’s say, a sweet and savory version with pineapple and pork? Sounds delicious.
Green Curry Paste
A vegan version of traditional Indian-style flavor base, this recipe from Minimalist Baker will add a hit of flavor and a touch of vibrant color to any dish you prepare.
Philly Cheesesteak
Misfits Market was born in the City of Brotherly Love, so you know we can’t resist a traditional Philly cheesesteak with sautéed green peppers. It’s the perfect comfort meal to be eaten right on the couch—no table necessary. Don’t do meat? We got you. The Nut-Free Vegan has a just-as-delicious vegan version made with Portobello mushrooms.
Pepper Relish
Sweet, savory, and a little spicy, this homemade pepper relish is the perfect add-on to any sandwich, whether you’re enjoying meat or tofu.
Ratatouille
Got a fridge full of produce and not sure how to use it? Try this French-inspired baked veggie dish from BuzzFeed that employs green peppers, plus a slew of other Misfit faves like tomatoes, squash, and eggplant.
Stuffed Peppers (meat and meatless)
When in doubt, make stuffed peppers. This baking method makes for a versatile and—more importantly—easy weeknight dinner. It’s a snap to customize with your favorite fillings; start with these tasty vegan, meat-based, and gluten-free versions.
In our own Misfits Market version, we stuffed our peppers with onion, zucchini, farro, spicy chorizo, and a little bit of cheese. But the filling options are pretty endless. Rice and beans. Corn, tomatoes, and jalapeños. Bok choy, ginger, and garlic.
Fajitas
No batch of fajitas is complete without zesty bell peppers. Try this chicken recipe as-is or, if you’re looking for something lighter, transform it into a burrito bowl with cauliflower “rice,” fire-roasted corn, and house-made guacamole.
Related: Everything You Need to Know About Peppers
How do you use up your green bell peppers? Share in a comment below!
Are green peppers and red peppers the same?
| You might be surprised to find out that red peppers are just the ripened version of green peppers. When left on the vine, green peppers will eventually turn red. This changes the taste and even some of its nutritional makeup. Red peppers typically contain higher amounts of vitamin C. These red veggies also contain beta carotene. This is the color pigmentation in the red and yellow peppers that converts to vitamin A when you eat them. At the end of the day, it is all about what you like best. Enjoy your green (or red!) peppers on a savory kebab or a zesty fajita! |
Comments (5)
My kids loved it when I mixed green peppers, mushrooms and any type of sausage. (links or bulk) Cooke them together and them mixed in our favorite sauce to pour over pasta ( I usually used spring macs). This was also a great party food, easy to prepare ahead of time and a nice variation from the traditional pasta and meatballs.
I just roasted them and put them in a salad. I am not a green pepper fan, but they were good roasted.
Suggestion: most people already know about green peppers and onions. If you’re trying to get people to buy and eat rhubarb or artichokes or parsnips (you know, the more obscure produce) you should feature those foods first on this blog, especially since you’re only updating once every 2 weeks.
In my latest box, I got recipe #1 for the sweet potatoes. “Nice,” I thought, “Misfits is getting feedback that people don’t know what to do with the food in the box, they need instructions” and I opened the inner packaging to discover that my box contained zero of the ingredients for that recipe. So thanks for that. I get it, there’s all of the internet at my disposal, I can research my own recipes. But if I cancel my subscription, here’s a little of why:
Our household cooks. We regularly eat vegetables. We do quite a lot of experimenting with foods from various cultures around the world, and enjoy exotic spices and varied produce. You know those surveys that go around the internet asking how many from this list of foods don’t you eat? That’s not us. So the idea of getting a box of interesting produce in the mail is appealing.
Then the box arrives and it’s full of two kinds of produce: the kind you already know you like and eat (proof: there’s a bunch in your fridge right now) and the kind you don’t have already at home because (1) you never really liked it enough to want it in your house as a food choice (hello, grapefruit) or (2) you have no idea what it is or what to do with it. Again: sure, the internet. But it’s not much different than buying, for example, a breadfruit because it looks cool on the outside only to discover that the reason it isn’t as popular as good-tasting-fruit is that it doesn’t really taste good. Sure, it’s not poisonous and you can stay alive by eating it, you can cook it any way that you would cook a potato. Maybe there’s a way to cook it that it’s absolutely delicious, who knows? I have stopped purchasing random ingredients at the farmers market with the intent of finding out something to do with it when I get home. What I *do* purchase are specific obscure ingredients that I need for a specific recipe, but the experimenting starts with an action plan, not the other way around.
My point is that if it comes in a Misfits box, and I don’t know what to do with it, it is less likely to get eaten (and more likely to become food waste) than the green peppers and onions (because now my household contains twice as much of the stuff we actually eat, so giddy-up, get those used up before they go bad, as well.
Also, you probably don’t send breadfruit to anyone, I just used that as an example from my younger life to illustrate that it’s difficult to cook food that you don’t know about beforehand. Also, if something like breadfruit tasted as good as, say, bananas, it would already be as popular. They’re obscure because they’re just not that tasty. And if that’s not true, it would be good for it to come with instructions. Same as the what-do-you-call-it from the Misfits box: make it easier for people to not waste them.
If we have a lot of green bell peppers that we haven’t gotten around to use, we’ll chop them and layer them on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Then, we freeze them and place in freezer bags to use in something that calls for sautéed peppers. We can measure out what we need because they aren’t stuck together. They work perfectly!
Slice into circles about 1/4 in thick. Place in a heated frying pan with oil of choice and cook an egg in it. Add minced onions to the top before flipping it to cook the other side. Usually the perfect size for creating egg and English muffin sandwiches for breakfast on the go.