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MEET THE KROCKS: We are a married couple who started on a life-changing whole food, plant-based weight loss journey in June 2018. To date, we have lost over 270 pounds combined and we aren’t done yet! Read Our Story
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Before we switched to a whole food, plant-based lifestyle, we loved making stuffed peppers! After we made the switch, this was one of the first recipes I wanted to adapt. We have made these several times over the past year, and we finally perfected and filmed our recipe!
One of my favorite things about this recipe is that you can easily change it up with different veggies, spices, etc. If you don’t like something we included below, just leave it out! Let us know if you end up adding anything different – we are always looking for ways to switch it up.
Over time, we kept adding more and more things to the filling mix, and eventually, we ended up with about twice the amount of filling we needed for our 8 peppers. Normal people might go ahead and divide the amounts in half… but having extra filling has actually been the best part of this recipe! We store the extra filling in our freezer and use it for tacos, nachos, salads and more.
Watch video above, check out the recipe below and let us know if you try it out! Scroll down for more information on the products featured in the video.
Vegan Stuffed Peppers (Mexican-Style, Oil-Free)
These mexican-style stuffed peppers make a great portable lunch!
Ingredients
- 8 bell peppers (tops removed and reserved for filling)
Filling
- – Tops from the 8 bell peppers, finely diced
- – 2 medium red onions (approx. 2 cups), finely diced
- – 16oz white mushrooms, finely diced
- – 1 to 2 jalapeño peppers (with seeds removed), finely diced
- – 2 x 1 oz packets of salt-free taco seasoning*
- – 1 x 6oz can of no-salt added tomato paste
- – 2 tsp Better Than Bouillon Organic Reduced Sodium Seasoned Vegetable Base* (OPTIONAL)
- – 2 x 12oz bags frozen riced cauliflower
- – 2 x 15oz cans no-salt added black beans, drained & rinsed
- – 1 cup frozen corn
- – 3 cups cooked brown rice (made from 1 cup uncooked)
- – 2 Tbsp lime juice
- – 2 tsp garlic powder
- – 4 tsp chili powder*
- – 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper flakes OR chipotle smoked red jalapeños* (OPTIONAL)
- – 1 to 2 tsp salt (OPTIONAL)
Tomato Sauce
- – 1 x 15oz can no-salt added tomato sauce
- – 1 tsp smoked paprika
- – 1 tsp garlic powder
- – 1 tsp onion powder
- – 1 tsp oregano
- – 1/2 tsp salt (OPTIONAL)
Directions
IMPORTANT NOTE: This recipe makes a TON of the filling mixture. It will make at least twice the amount you need to fill 8 peppers. We like to keep the extra filling in our freezer and use to top nachos, tacos, salads & more. Or you can save it for another round of peppers! If you don’t want extra filling, we suggest you halve the amounts for the filling mix above.- Preheat your oven to 425°F.
- Slice the tops off of the 8 bell peppers and remove the ribs/seeds. Do not discard the tops – you will use them in the filling! Place the 8 peppers on a baking tray lined with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- While the oven is preheating, finely dice the pepper tops, onions, mushrooms and jalapeños*.
- Bake the bell peppers for 20 minutes. If you like your peppers a bit firmer, reduce the baking time as necessary.
- While the peppers bake, prepare the filling. Heat a large pot to medium. Add the onions, diced pepper tops, jalapeños & mushrooms. Cook on medium for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the peppers are softened and the onion is translucent. The mushrooms will release quite a bit of liquid, but you can add a few tablespoons of water or veggie stock as needed to prevent sticking/burning. IF you want to add salt, this is to the time to add 1 to 2 teaspoons – it will help draw moisture out of the veggies.
- Next, add the taco seasoning packets*, Better Than Bouillon* & tomato paste to your filling mix. Stir to combine.
- Add the riced cauliflower, cooked brown rice*, cooked black beans* & corn. If your riced cauliflower & corn are frozen, it is a good idea to microwave them for a minute or so before adding, just to help it thaw out a bit quicker.
- Add the lime juice, garlic powder & chili powder, plus optional chipotle smoked red jalapeños* & salt. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover the pot. Simmer for about 10 minutes and taste! You can add extra seasonings at this point if desired. You can also continue simmering a bit longer if there is still a lot of liquid.
- While your filling simmers, prepare your tomato sauce. Pour the can of no-salt added tomato sauce into a medium saucepan on medium heat. Add the seasonings and stir! Cover and heat on medium for about 5 minutes until heated through.
- Once you remove the peppers from the oven, be sure to dump out any extra liquid that might have built up in the peppers. Then fill them with a generous portion of the filling mixture and top with a few tablespoons of the tomato sauce.
- Return the stuffed peppers to the oven for 5 minutes to heat. Serve immediately or cool and store in glass containers for up to 4 days.
- OPTIONAL: Top with your favorite store bought or homemade plant-based queso when serving!
*SEE RECIPE NOTES & TIPS BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION
Recipe Notes & Tips:
PLEASE NOTE: If you choose to purchase any products through these links, we receive a small commission from each sale at NO extra cost to you. All proceeds go back into making more content!
*As we noted above, this recipe makes a TON of the filling mixture. If you don’t want extra filling, we suggest you halve the recipe. The extra filling will keep in a freezer for several months. You can use it for another round of peppers or as a topping on tacos, nachos, salad, etc. For Brian’s lunches, I like to add some extra filling with his peppers as well.
*Feel free to add more or less of any of the veggies/beans/etc. in the filling mixture! If you don’t like something, omit it altogether or add more of something you do like. This recipe is very forgiving and easy to customize.
*Be extra careful when dicing your jalapeños! We like to remove the seeds to reduce the spice level. Wear gloves if possible and NEVER touch your eyes, face, etc. before washing your hands thoroughly. Also, if you have any cuts on your hands, you will definitely want to avoid touching the jalapeños – it will sting! We have a lot of experience in this department 😉
*We like to use Mrs. Wages Salt-Free Roasted Bell Pepper & Garlic Taco Seasoning Mix. If you don’t have taco seasoning packets, you can use your favorite salt-free taco seasoning recipe instead!
*We use the “Organic Reduced Sodium Vegetable Base” version of Better Than Bouillon because it is oil-free (not all of them are)! If you don’t have Better Than Bouillon, we recommend just omitting it and NOT adding any regular veggie stock in it’s place, because it will water down the mixture too much. You CAN add a splash or two of veggie stock as needed to prevent sticking (instead of water).
*In the video, we used a chili powder blend, but you can swap in regular chili powder as well. The blend we used is Spice Hunter Salt-Free Chili Powder Blend.
*Make sure your brown rice & black beans are cooked BEFORE they go into the mixture. For the brown rice, we cooked ours in an Instant Pot and had it stored in our freezer from a previous batch cook. For one cup of uncooked rice, we covered with about 1.5 cups of water and cooked for 25 minutes on high pressure. For black beans, we used the canned, no-salt added version from Whole Foods.
*For an extra kick, we added 1/4 tsp of Frontier Chipotle Smoked Red Jalapeños. This is totally optional. You can also swap in something like cayenne pepper or crushed red pepper flakes.
*If you want to add another layer of flavor, top with your favorite plant-based queso dip! We used Good Foods Plant-Based Queso Style Dip.
*For storage, I prefer to use 7-cup Pyrex bowls, since they are tall enough to fit the full peppers. We usually put 2 or 3 in each bowl and then store in our refrigerators at work for easy lunches throughout the week.
Featured Products:
PLEASE NOTE: If you choose to purchase any products through these links, we receive a small commission from each sale at NO extra cost to you. All proceeds go back into making more content!
Check out our Amazon Page to see more of our favorite products!
AmazonBasics Silicone Baking Mat Sheet, Set of 2Mueller Chopper 4 Blade Pro Series
GIR: Get It Right Premium Silicone Spatula (16 inch)
Cooks Standard 02520 Quart Classic Stainless Steel Stockpot with Lid, 12-QT, Silver
Pyrex Storage Plus 7-cup Round Glass Food Storage Dish (Pack of 4 Containers)
365 Everyday Value, Black Beans, No Salt Added, 15 oz
365 Everyday Value, Organic Tomato Paste, No Salt Added, 6 oz
Muir Glen Organic No Salt Added Tomatoes, 15 oz (Pack of 12)
Mrs. Wages Salt Free Medium Roasted Seasoning Mix, Bell Pepper & Garlic
Better Than Bouillon Organic Vegetable Base 16 Oz, Reduced Sodium
Spice Hunter Chili Powder Blend
Frontier Chipotle Smoked Red Jalapeños
I love your YouTube channel. You two have good chemistry and great recipes. I’m edging into more plant based foods so this site is helpful. Love Peet. Oh, and I ordered the onion cutter on Amazon via the link above.
Thank you Cheryl! We really appreciate you watching and using our link to order ❤️
Hi my name is violet. Thank you very much for writing out all the recipes and all the YouTube videos. Recently I’m experiencing high blood pressure. I’m about 50 or 60 pounds overweight. I’m willing to try the potato challenge for two weeks. Can you please email to help me start The beginnings of eating potatoes. Did you only eat potatoes all day?
Hi Violet! Make sure that you are consulting with your doctor, because we are not experts by any means… just sharing what we did! We were inspired by Penn Jillette’s book Presto! and tried to follow mostly what he did as far as the two weeks of plain potatoes goes. During those two weeks, we only at plain potatoes with nothing added.
Made this today..took to work..wow!! Couldn’t wait to get home to have more! I ate it as peppers for lunch..tonight I just ate the stuffing as chili! Flavors just explode!! Love all your videos!
Thanks for letting us know! We are glad you enjoyed it! I love this for batch cooking because the flavors get even better over night!
Hey kids, what could i sub the jalapenos with? What do you think bout adding 2 cans tom sauce instead of 1 paste and 1 sauce and just steam all together instead of doing any separate sauteing? I won’t be using with peppers just topping for my potatoes.
Just an fyi: I make (Smokey, liquid) and beans. Tastes like ham n beans. Also split pea soup in my instant pot, double batch. When it cools it is like condensed soup. Keep in frig, scoop prolly 1-2 cups out add some water to as thin as you want and usually extra seasoning while warming my baked pot wrapped in damp rag in micro. Hen i warm my “soup”. I made 8 potatoes in the instant pot and just keep in frig for very quick meals. I add whole potatoes to “soup” cut up and enjoy. Some times I and some canned black beans with juice to it too. I’m addicted. I don’t like to cook so the easy recipes are perfect for me. I tend to stay with mostly starches. More satisfying for me, especially with a ton of garlic and smoke flavor.
I love the liquid smoke, I picked up from you all.
Thanks for all you 2 do!
You can just leave the jalapenos out altogether! You can definitely add 2 cans of tomato sauce directly to the mix, although I think it might need a lot of extra cooking down with the extra liquid. Maybe 2 cans of tomato paste would work better instead… hmmm, we will have to experiment. Let us know if you figure anything out 🙂 Thanks for all of the ideas – they sound great!!
This recipe turned out wonderfully, thanks so much.
Thanks for letting us know – glad you enjoyed it!
The print button doesn’t work!
Your links to the spices on amazon are not working. I cannot get any of the product links to open. I was looking for the taco spice mix and the chili powder and the jalapeño seasonings etc. please fix. Thank you
They are working for me! These are the affiliate links, so if you purchase we do get a small commission at no extra charge to you.
Chipotle Smoked Red Jalapenos – https://amzn.to/2MPANsR
Chili Powder – https://amzn.to/2MQW19U
Taco Seasoning Mix – https://amzn.to/2NJsFdd
Hope this helps!
Hello! My husband and I made this as our first WFPB meal. We halved the recipe for the filling but used a whole recipe for the sauce, which still made enough to fill 5 bell peppers. We used quinoa instead of brown rice. We did add salt to the sauce but only half a teaspoon. We had to make our own salt free taco seasoning as Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s ,and Natural Grocers did not have Mrs.Wages or even a salt free taco seasoning of any kind and we didn’t have time to wait for delivery from Amazon.
This recipe is really delicious. I did have to add some Nutritional Yeast at the table myself but my husband ate almost two whole bell peppers heaping with filling and sauce. I could only get through one before I felt full. Now, for anyone interested, I am someone who loves calorie and macro counting so I used my “Lose It” app to enter all the ingredients into a recipe and with the amounts halved and the sauce whole with salt in the sauce and quinoa instead of rice. Here are the totals
In one serving, which is one stuffed bell pepper
301 Calories
2.2 g of total fat
0.1g of Saturated fat
0 cholesterol
196 mg of Sodium
53.1 g of carbs
(11.6 g of fiber)
(11.6 g of sugars)
13 grams of Protein
Anyway, thank you so much for this recipe. I am a new follower on here and on YouTube. You guys are amazing.
Amazing! Thanks for sharing this! Great tips and adaptations. I am always curious about the calories in our recipes, so thanks for posting that!
I made the recipe and love it! Thanks for sharing. While watching the video my daughter was admiring your measuring spoons. Do you know or remember where you got them?
They were from Martha Stewart at Macy’s a LONG time ago. They are magnetic so they all stick together! Here is a similar set just in black (small disclaimer… we are Amazon affiliates so if you use our amazon links we do get a small commission at no extra cost to you) – https://amzn.to/2ZObNUQ
Thanks for watching 🙂
Just made this recipe last night and it will be my lunch for the week. It’s been fun watching you guys. Love how tactical/practical you are about this. Keep up the great work. I’ve been whole-food, plant-based for the past 12 weeks (including 2 week potato “kick-off”), lost 50 lbs, not going back!
Awesome job! 50 pounds is great!
Thank you for your content Jessica and Brian. I am cooking these stuffed peppers tomorrow. Just finished cooking a massive batch of Brian’s Chilli. Tastes delicious. I have purchased the ingredients for your hummus and squash casserole too. Loving your videos and recipes. Thank you for your incredible recipes and inspiration.
I just made this recipe and it is SO DELICIOUS! This is the first time I’ve ever used riced cauliflower and I’m amazed at how much the texture resembles rice.
Thank you so much for sharing your lives and WFPB adventures on YouTube. I love your channel and I never miss a video. ❤️
Thanks Mandy! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Omg!!! These are excellent, my only regret I cut the recipe in half….I want more! And I am not vegan! Great job on recipe!!!! Will be trying more of your ideas! Thank you!
Great to hear that Sue! It does make a LOT of filling if you make the full recipe, but it freezes well and can be used for so many other things 🙂
Love you guys!
Re-imagine stuffed peppers Italian style. No salt tomato sauce, tomato paste, canned mushrooms no salt, frozen peas and carrots no salt, frozen spinach no salt and chickpea pasta. No salt Italian seasoning.
Yum.
That sounds great Ann!