Stuffed Peppers Falling Over? Break Out The Muffin Tin

When it comes to versatile ingredients, bell peppers are an exceptional example. They can add a touch of natural sweetness and texture to everything from an easy stir fry to sandwiches and can be served raw and crunchy, sautéed, grilled, roasted, pickled, or marinated and preserved in oil. They add depth to hummus and purées, make a tasty veggie addition to eggs and scrambles, and can be blended into soups. So many cuisines incorporate peppers in different ways, but beyond flavor, they have a unique shape that makes them a functional serving vessel, too.

Stuffed peppers are delicious, not to mention a fun and whimsical way to serve your favorite foods. But making them can sometimes be a bit of a mess as they can fall over during the baking process, spilling all your precious filling all over the place. Fortunately, there's a super-easy trick that will keep your stuffed pepper-making process from becoming a total pain, and all you need is a common kitchen tool: the muffin tin. By placing your stuffed peppers in these individual cavities, you can be sure they'll stay upright even as they cook, so when you open the oven door, you won't find any unpleasant surprises — just little pouches of peppery goodness.

Given the versatility of peppers, you can get super creative with what you choose to stuff them with. It helps to have a starchy element as a binder for your other ingredients, and while rice is a classic, you can also experiment here. Orzo is a pasta similar in size and shape to rice, so makes for an easy swap. But you can also use quinoa, amaranth, or couscous.

From there, add extra veggies. Alliums like garlic, onion, shallots, and leeks bring aromatics and flavor, while carrots or beets add a little extra sweetness. You can opt to keep this a vegetarian-friendly dish or include sausage, ground meat, or even bacon for a protein boost. If seafood is more your thing, shrimp, scallops, or crab are welcome additions, too. A stuffed pepper recipe may include spices like paprika, cinnamon, allspice, and coriander, along with sweet and chewy raisins for balance and contrasting texture.

Cheese is a great way to top things off, and beef and cheddar stuffed peppers are a crave-able classic version, but you can also opt for blue or goat cheese, mozzarella or parmesan, or even a blend. In your muffin tin, you won't have to worry about your gooey, melty goodness escaping, either.

When you're shopping for bell peppers, have you ever wondered what those different colors indicate? While most of the time you will find red, yellow, orange, and green, there are even white, purple, and brown out there, too, which means that having a few reliable bell pepper recipes makes it awfully easy to eat the rainbow.

When it comes to flavor, green peppers, which are the least ripe, tend to be a little more bitter, while orange and yellow fall somewhere in the middle on the sweetness spectrum, with red being the most sweet. And while the flavor preference may influence which pepper you pick, there are several varieties that work well for stuffing and fit in your muffin tin, including the Bell Boy or Fat n Sassy. If you like the flavor of jalapeño or the longer Marconi Italian, you can still incorporate these by chopping them up and adding them to your filling for extra peppery oomph. With this simple muffin tin tip, you can experiment in so many delicious ways and know your peppers will always come out standing up.