The best garlic, mushroom, and quinoa stuffed peppers recipe

This is a quick and easy weeknight tea of quinoa stuffed peppers that the whole family can enjoy! It might be particularly good if served with a warming, slightly spiced red sauce which can be either as spicy or mild as you might want.

Making quinoa

First things first, let’s get the quinoa cooking. It can take up to thirty minutes to properly cook quinoa, so it’s worth getting it started first. Add a hundred grams of dry quinoa to a pot, followed by three hundred grams of water or stock. Bring to a boil, and cook, covered, for up to half an hour. Make sure you cover it, as it will help with the cooking process, giving you well-steamed quinoa instead of boiled.

Cooking the quinoa in stock is a great idea, and it’s sure to inject some flavour into the dish. While your quinoa is cooking, slice your mushrooms and peel and mince your garlic. Be sure to chop your garlic quite small so that it can cook well during the twenty minutes that it will be baking. 

When your quinoa is done, it should be al dente, and have no water in the pot! I know it’s just basic physics, but I always feel like it’s a bit magical, as silly as that sounds.

An alternative to quinoa might be barley as it works well in these Stuffed Peppers with Ground Turkey so I can’t see why you couldn’t substitute the quinoa for barley in this recipe too.

Adding the other ingredients

Add your minced garlic and chopped mushrooms to the pot with the quinoa, and allow them to sit in amongst the hot grains for a few minutes while you prepare the bell peppers. To prepare the peppers, simply remove the tops and the cores, and then stand them upright on a baking sheet. It’s a simple method, but it’s effective at making a little bowl.

Stuffing the peppers

When your peppers are on the baking sheet, fill them with the quinoa mixture, and place them in the oven, preheated to 180˚C to bake for twenty minutes. If you want, you can drizzle them with a little olive oil or fry spray before they go into the oven, but I chose not to here to cut down on calories.

Once you remove them from the oven, the skin should be a little crinkled, and the flesh should be really supple and soft to the touch. While they’re still hot, it’s a great time to toss a few of your favourite spices over them. For example, do you have any fancy Himalayan rock salt? If so, now would be the time to throw a generous pinch over the top.

The reason that I was trying to conserve calories a little throughout this recipe is that these pepper go best with a really rich, decadent mash. There are no two ways about it: it’s just a fact of the kitchen.

Therefore, it could be worth setting some potatoes on the boil at the same time as your quinoa, that way, you can mash and prepare them until they’re rich and decadent while the quinoa stuffed peppers are baking in the oven.

The rich umami flavour from the garlic and the mushrooms would be complemented by a creamy mash, or well contrasted by a sharp, spicy side dish.

Other recipes you might like

Have you tried my stuffed peppers recipe yet? It is definitely one to try if not! You can even make slow cooker stuffed peppers!

Taco beef stuffed sweet potato is perfect on Slimming World and other weight loss plans. It is easy to make and full of flavour.

For a quinoa breakfast recipe how about trying my quinoa breakfast bowl or for another main meal with quinoa what about this black bean burger recipe?

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