Leftover Chili Stuffed Bell Peppers

Leftover chili stuffed bell peppers are delicious! Perfect for dinner or make when you have leftover 5 ingredient chili the next day. Healthy vegetarian dinner even my kids love.

Leftover Chili Recipe

I’ve been making stuffed bell peppers for years. The same old way all of the time with the same insides and really never thought twice about it. With kids that are older now though, and not always here for dinner, I have had to work through food that is left the next day. Here is one favorite of ours.

It was my husband’s favorite dish that his grandma made when he was a kid. When we married he taught me how to make them and they were great! I used the same idea where you blanche the bell peppers, but instead of filling them with the rice and meat mixture I opted to fill it with our dutch oven chili! This is what I did.

I know….yummy right??!! If you have a favorite chili recipe you can use that, use canned chili, or or mild chili recipe is very popular too. All in all it is a pretty low fat stuffed peppers recipe and lower in carb than those using rice.

Unique Stuffed Peppers

Once you have your ground beef, vegetarian chili, or leftover chili, preparing the rest is easy peasy.

• If you have never blanched anything before it isn’t as difficult as it sounds.
• You just remove the ribs and seeds, bring to a boil over medium heat, cover and simmer until they’re tender really.
• It takes all of 15 minutes or so
• It’s really quite easy, I will share how to do it below. 

Have your muffin tin baking dish ready so you can pop them right in when they’re done.

Chili Stuffed Bell Peppers

1. Cut the tops off peppers and remove seeds inside
2. Blanch bell peppers <—— instructions here if you’ve never blanched anything
3. Put each pepper into the hole of a large muffin tin (easiest way to keep them from not falling over)
4. Put chili mixture into peppers, no more than 3/4 of the way full. Use canned, leftover chili, or 5 ingredient Instant Pot chili.
   1. Want it a bit spicy? Add some chili powder into the mix!
5. Put in oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until chili is warmed

Top with cheese and diced jalapeno if desired and leave in oven for 5 more minutes. Can increase oven to 400 to get tops nice and brown.

Chili stuffed peppers

You can leave the tops of these chili stuffed bell peppers when cooking or use them as a sort of steamer and leave them on. I don’t blanch those so typically we don’t eat them with the meal but either way works.

You are just warming the chili back up and letting it soak into the inside of the bell pepper in the oven really. It’s a great healthy chili meal idea! Other recipes to try are:

1. Buy more and make a batch of green pepper jelly too.
2. Instant Pot stuffed peppers or Crockpot stuffed peppers
3. Lasagna stuffed bell peppers
4. This Instant Pot stuffed pepper casserole is great. NO large skillet required for this, instead it is a one pot meal that cooks in no time.
5. We love bloody mary chili and Crockpot venison chili