Bill and I are known for stopping by local health food stores just to grab one or two items for the day. We frequently make small shopping trips to the grocery store throughout the week, and rarely do a large trip for the week. That is just what seems to work best for us. We have some sort of inspiration for a meal, and run out and grab what we need for it. Ideally, we would love to have a local farmers market available to us and base our meals off of what is available that day, but for now the reverse option is what will have to do.
However, on some trips to the grocery store, we do see an item of produce, wild caught fish, or another delicious looking piece of meat and we will grab that in the moment and create a meal around that item. For this recipe, that is exactly what happened. I had stopped into one of our local specialty food stores, McGinnis Sisters, and spotted the hot banana peppers. They looked fantastic, so I grab a few, not really sure what to do with them, but I couldn’t pass them up.
Luckily, we had just received another shipment of beef from our good friend Rod Morrison of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats, and this time we received some ground chuck and ground sirloin. We quickly decided to create a simple recipe for stuffed, grilled banana peppers, and went to work!
Ingredients:
- 8 Hot Banana Peppers, tops removed and seeded. Reserve 1 tablespoon of seeds for seasoning
- 1 pound grass fed ground beef
- 1/2 of a vidalia onion, finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Process:
- Rinse banana peppers, and removed ends to seed them.
- Save 1 tablespoon of the hot pepper seeds to season the ground beef.
- On medium heat, brown the ground beef, adding the garlic, onion, salt, pepper, and hot banana pepper seeds.
- Once the meat is cooked, allow to cool.
- Preheat grill to medium-medium high heat.
- Carefully Stuff the hot peppers with the ground beef.
- Grill peppers 8-10 minutes, turning frequently.
These peppers were delicious but VERY spicy. The seeds of the pepper are where all the heat is, so adding them into the dish really packs a punch. If you want a more mild stuffed pepper, discard the seeds. We would even recommend wearing gloves when handling the pepper seeds. The oils from the seeds can burn your fingers. Makes sure not to touch your eyes or face (or keyboard – Hayley made that mistake and paid for it hours later with burning eyes) after cooking with them.
The joke with this recipe was “what does a paleo person do to relieve their mouths from the hot peppers since bread or milk is not on the menu?” We got a lot of great responses through facebook. Some of the responses were to eat dark chocolate, a lemon or lime, and any full fat dairy item except butter. If you like spice, you will love this dish.
As always, enjoy!
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Perfect! I needed an idea for dinner… đŸ™‚
That looks really good, might have to try it out tonight!
Wouldn't these be fun as appetizers at a casual cocktail party?
Im at work right now and am salivating….cant wait to make these. Amazing.
Yum. Dinner tonight!
Any thoughts on using buffalo meat as a substitute for ground beef?
Hi Chelsea,
This recipe would be fantastic with most any ground meat. Turkey, pork, buffalo would all be delicious, or even lamb would probably be okay. Buffalo is a fantastic substitution for any recipe using ground beef. We use buffalo all the time, it's one of our favorites. It will be delicious, go for it!
Looks great! How did you manage to keep the ground beef from falling out while turning these on the grill?
Hi Emily,
Honestly we were just very careful. Some of the meat did spill out, but we would catch it and put it back in the pepper.
Fantastic recipe, made them last night and they were delicious!!!!! Thank you!