stuffed stuffing

I am SO, completely, STUFFED with stuffing vegetables! I don’t want to eat another stuffed vegetable for a year! (Okay, maybe only a few months). In this post, I will show you a variety of vegetables that can be stuffed using the same stuffing. I completely forgot to add capsicum to the dish! Here’s a lonely photo of a red one:

Stuffed capsicum, stuffed onion, stuffed grape leaves..

I also didn’t include potato, cabbage, or grape leaves as these have different methods. I have/will be posting these on a different recipe card.

Here is the sample dish of stuffed vegetables:

Guess what veggies these are, I’ll spell it out later in the post

Serves: 1 – 8 [look for the guide below]

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup rice

180g minced meat

1tbs each: mixed spice, salt, pepper, safflower

1 tsp cumin

pinch of paprika (optional)

Method:

In a large bowl, mix the above ingredients and set aside.

This is the stuffing….

Take any vegetable you love. Using a zucchini corer, core out it’s insides. A brief method on using one can be found here.

A pic of when I used this stuffing recipe to stuff green tomatoes

Stuff the vegetable with the mixture until it’s 3/4 full.

Repeat until all cored vegetables are filled.

I didn’t get to try the turnip, but stuffed eggplants are so delicious! Keep the green bit on them during the cooking process, just remove it when you want to eat up..

Place a large pot on high heat to bring water to a boil.

Place 3 tablespoons (approx – add more or less, to taste) into the water. Add dried, crushed mint, salt, and mixed spice.

Stir through. You can also add your favourite stock cube if you like.

Place the stuffed vegetables into the broth making sure they are immersed.

General Rule of Thumb: add a large plate and bowl of water to press down on the vegetables. If this is a bother, use anything that is heavy and can put weight on the stuffed veggies. This ensures that the stuffing does not spew out of the vegetables into the broth. My mother never uses this technique but my grandma insists on it. So here’s a picture of what it’d look like with a weight:

All in all, if you turn down the heat so your broth is simmering and you pop them in bottom side down, you probably wouldn’t need the weights.

Cover the pot and turn down the heat to medium-low and cook for no less than 45 minutes (this depends on the type of vegetable you have stuffed – guide below).

Half way into the cooking process, crush a few cloves of garlic and add to the pot. NOTE: for vegetables like tomato, also add finely chopped coriander for added flavour.

When cooking time is almost complete, take out one stuffed vegetable and check if it’s completely cooked through. If it has, then your dish is ready to serve, otherwise, return to the pot and cook for the necessary amount of time.

To serve, place a small bowl of broth for each person and eat with pita bread (if desired).

Below are some guidelines to help you with the cooking process.

The stuffing mixture makes:

4 – 5 green zucchinis

5 – 6 white zucchinis

4 medium tomatoes

5 medium onions

2 medium-large capsicums

3 – 4 medium turnips

8 round (small) eggplants

5 – 6 long (small) eggplants

1 large eggplant

Cooking time for:

onion – 45 minutes

turnip – 1 hour

tomato – 45 minutes

capsicum – 45 minutes

green zucchini – 1 hour

white zucchini – 1 hour

eggplant (small) – 1 hour

eggplant (large) – 1 hour

Just note these are only estimate guidelines. It’s up to you to check on it when cooking time is almost done. Just by pinching the veggie: if it’s completely cooked, it’ll feel soft, else it’ll be semi-hard.

A quick rundown of how to make stuffed onion in particular…  keep the roots and cut off the top

vvvvv cut this part

       but keep this part ^^^^

…just trim off the roots…

Then you core it, stuff it, and then peel off the brown skin. You can seal the opening off, but instead I put in a few almonds so that nothing comes out.

It’s sooo dark in thereee……

This baby tasted divine!

Look, it’s a peppercorn!

Note, I have posted a different recipe card for okra, this can be found by clicking this link. So, how many of those veggies did you guess? Here they are again below (with their names, this time!)

Clockwise from the top left: white zucchini; large okra; green tomatoes; green zucchini; long eggplant; round eggplant

Devour!

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