Delicious, tender, juicy, flavorful, beautiful, colorful Ground Beef Stuffed Mini Peppers! With tahini sauce! Poured over the mini peppers! So good!

My son hates peppers. Any pepper – sweet, spicy, large, mini, cooked, raw. Hates them. But loves meat. So what does he do? You probably guessed it; he scoops the meat out of the pepper, gives me the pepper and gobbles down the meat. Big mistake! Huge! As tender, flavorful and juicy as the beef is, the combination of the beautifully seasoned tender meat and the crunchy baked pepper is meant to be gobbled down together. Gobbled down or savored, that’s up to you, but all together, in one juicy and crunchy bite.

Ground Beef Stuffed Mini Peppers on white serving platter close-up

The Ingredients:

Ground Beef: Use 80/20 or 90/10 lean-to-fat ratio for ground beef. This will produce more tender and flavorful meat.
Cabbage: adds a little crunch to the dish, plus it’s packed with nutrients.
Bacon: I like to use bacon bits/crumbles; it adds a hint of smokiness. I purchase a bag of bacon crumbles in Costco and use this in salads, omelets, and other dishes. If you prefer, you may also use baked or fried bacon stirps, about 4 or 5 of them, and slice the bacon into bite size pieces before adding into the coked ground beef.
Seasoning: just salt, pepper, and chili powder
Mini Peppers: mini peppers are smaller and thinner than bell peppers. You can find them in the produce section, usually packaged in 1-pound bags.

For the Tahini Sauce, you will need:

Tahini paste: Tahini is made by grinding sesame seeds into a paste. That’s it, just 100% sesame seeds. A jar of tahini paste is usually found in the condiments section or in the ethnic foods section of the grocery store.
Garlic: just one pressed garlic clove adds more flavor to the sauce
Lemon Juice: adds a little tang
Salt: to make it a little more flavorful
Cold Water: to dilute the paste into a thinner, pourable, sauce

How to make tahini sauce:

In a medium mixing bowl combine 2 tablespoons of tahini paste, 1 pressed garlic clove, about 1 teaspoon lemon juice (squeezed from fresh lemon), 1/4 teaspoon salt, and about 1/2 cup of cold water.
Next, using a fork, whisk the mixture until well combined.
Now have a taste – add more salt, if required, more water to make it thinner.

Store leftovers in the refrigerator for up to one week. Tahini sauce does thicken slowly. So, once it thickens, you may like to use it as a spread, or add more water to dilute and use as a dressing in a salad or over your leftover stuffed mini peppers.

How to make Ground Beef Stuffed Mini Peppers:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Next, pour about 1/4 cup of water into the parchment paper-lined baking dish and set aside.
Prepare the mini peppers: rinse the mini peppers under cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. Place the mini peppers on a cutting board and, using a sharp knife, cut each mini pepper in half, lengthwise through the middle. Then, remove the seeds and set aside.
Cook the beef: Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet, over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion and sauté until the onion has softened (about 3-4 minutes). Reduce heat to medium if the onions are starting to burn. Then add ground beef and sauté breaking up the beef (about 2-3 minutes). Add the seasonings (salt, ground black pepper, and chili powder), chopped cabbage, and the bacon bits. Stir well and cook until the cabbage has softened and the meat has cooked through.
Stuff each mini pepper half with about one tablespoon of the cooked beef mixture and gently place each pepper on the parchment paper lined baking sheet (on the water). Cover the baking sheet with foil (tightly, so no steam escapes) and bake the stuffed peppers in the oven for 20-30 minutes, depending on how crunchy, or soft, you like the peppers. You can take the peppers out of the oven 20 minutes after cooking and check the peppers’ texture by piercing a fork or toothpick into the thickest part of the pepper. If you would like them softer textured, cook for another 10 minutes.
Take the peppers out of the oven and allow to cool down, about 10 minutes.
Place the peppers on a serving platter and pour the tahini sauce over each half of the mini pepper. Serve warm.

What goes well with the mini peppers:

Enjoy the mini peppers with mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, rice, roasted veggies.

If you are not a fan of the slightly bitter and nutty taste of tahini, the sauce can also be substituted for hot sauce or sour cream.

You may also like to add some freshly grated parmesan cheese and/or fresh cilantro, parsley, or fresh dill.

What can I do with the leftover ground beef stuffing?

If you have ground beef left over after stuffing all the peppers, try making Makarony Po Flotski! This is a Russian dish, meaning “Navy Style Macaroni”. My kids love having it for lunch at school!

Simply cook some macaroni, or any other type of pasta, and stir it into the skillet with the leftover beef. You can also add some marinara sauce and some freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Ground Beef Stuffed Mini Peppers

The Ingredients:

How to make tahini sauce:

How to make Ground Beef Stuffed Mini Peppers:

What goes well with the mini peppers:

What can I do with the leftover ground beef stuffing?

Try these other meat recipes: