Primal Recipe - Stuffed Peppers

The contest over the weekend at MDA was to post your favorite primal recipe. One of the most tasty primal/paleo dishes I know how to make is stuffed peppers with meat sauce over cauliflower rice. Since it's a combo I made up of mom's recipe for sauce and paleo meatloaf, I decided to write it up so I could post it for the contest. :)

Step 1: Meat Sauce

Ingredients:
1lb grass-fed ground beef
1/2 white onion
1 large can tomato sauce
1 large can tomato paste
1/4 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp minced garlic (optional)

Directions:
1. Grate onion using a cheese grater -- this makes it "disappear" into the sauce; or you can just dice it.
2. Using the pot you will cook the sauce in, brown ground beef with onion.
3. Add tomato sauce, paste, oregano, basil and garlic.
4. Simmer sauce on low for at least 30 minutes; an hour or two is ideal.

Step 2: Stuffed Peppers
This recipe is based on Mini Meatloaf Muffins from Christie.

Ingredients:
1 lb grass-fed ground beef
6 red, yellow or green peppers -- I prefer to use red, or red and yellow
1/2 cup diced or grated onion
1 tsp minced garlic
1 egg1/2 can tomato paste (can also use 1/2 cup of meat sauce, if you don't have tomato paste)

Directions:
1. Cut tops off peppers and remove seeds.
2. Remove stems / cores from tops, and diced the remaining pepper "flesh".
3. Dice or grate onion
4. Combine ground beef, diced peppers and onions, garlic, egg and tomato paste.
5. Stuff peppers with ground beef mixture.
6. Place stuffed peppers into a baking dish, leaving at least a small gap between them. If you have any leftover ground beef mixture that didn't fit into a pepper, form into meatballs and place in baking dish.
7. Cover bottom of baking dish with sauce, and spoon additional sauce over the tops of the peppers.
8. Bake peppers in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. Note: total baking time required will depend on the size of your peppers, and the amount of ground beef mixture in each one.

Step 3: Cauliflower Rice

Ingredients:
1 large head of cauliflower

Directions:
1. Cut decent sized florets off the head, and grate with a cheese grater until you reach the stem. Don't grate the stems, they do not cook as well as the florets. The grated florets should be about the size and consistency of rice or quinoa.
2. Once you have grated as much cauliflower as you would like, place it into a microwavable bowl. Cover (don't add any extra water!) bowl and microwave for 4-5 minutes.

Step 4: Enjoy!

Place a stuffed pepper and some of the sauce it was baked in over a serving of cauliflower rice. If you like more sauce, use more from the batch.