Mix meat and rice, season, stuff into a Hungarian pepper and cook in a tomato sauce. Simple right? Sort of but there are as many variations as there are families and things to consider re ingredients and techniques. If you decide to follow my recipe, peek at the Notes at the end and adopt your own variations.
We enjoyed this twice visiting relatives in Budapest last year (2023). My mother never made this dish. Once home near the end of October, I had only one chance to re-create it. Why? Because you ought to make this only with Hungarian (light yellow, sweet) peppers and I probably bought the last few at the market. It’s mid-July 2024 and shockingly the peppers have appeared early and I now have weeks to perfect this recipe.
Getting Ready: Ingredients (Scroll down to Notes at the very end for a few ingredient pointers)
600g minced pork
1/2 cup medium-grain rice
2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic
Hungarian sweet paprika powder
Hungarian paprika cream
1/2 cup plain bread crumbs
2 cans of San Marzano tomatoes (28 oz / 796 ml; 1 can is 3.3 cups and you need 4.5 cups - hence you need 2 cans)
1 stalk celery
1 egg
Vegeta (sold at Denningers and delis)
lard, sugar, salt, pepper, flour, butter
Workflow
A few of the following are optional day-before tasks and some are “must do first” steps.
parboil 1/2 cup of rice; (It will finish cooking when the stuffed peppers cook.) Do this first so the rice has time to cool. Rinse the rice and add it to a pot of water. The quantity of water is not that important as long as it’s about an inch or so higher than the rice. Add a pinch of salt and cook uncovered for 10 minutes. Pour it all through a strainer and set the rice aside to cool. [Can be done the day before.]
prepare onion and garlic; Finely chop an onion that’s about the size of a tennis ball. I do a quick whiz in my food blender. To this add 2 cloves of minced garlic. This will be lightly sauteed. Cool slightly before adding this to the stuffing mixture. [Cut another small onion in half - this will be added to the tomato sauce and will be removed at the end of cooking.] [Can be done the day before and stored, covered in the fridge.]
create a panade; (this is a milk/bread mixture that keeps meat moist and tender) While often made with actual bread, here you can mix 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs (regular or panko) with 1/4 cup of water or milk. set aside. This will be added to the meat/stuffing mixture.
prepare about 8 peppers; Do this at the beginning or while the onions are cooking. It's not ideal to do this the day before. Wash and dry the peppers. Cut off the tops and use a spoon to scrape out the seeds and the white ribs - thus hollowing them out ready for stuffing.
prepare the tomatoes; This will be the sauce base. I’ve tried this with passata, but I get the best results using one and a half 28oz / 796 ml cans of genuine San Marzano tomatoes (designated with D.O.P on the label). Give them a quick whiz in the food processor so that no large chunks remain. Measure out 4.5 cups.
prep celery; Clean one piece of celery or the celery leaves from inside a bunch of celery. It will add flavour to the sauce and is usually removed at the end of cooking.
Stuffing - using ingredients prepped as outlined above
4 tsp lard (or oil)
1 finely chopped
1 clove garlic minced
1 tsp paprika powder
1 tsp paprika cream
600g minced pork
1/2 cup uncooked rice - parboiled and cooled
1 egg
panade
1 tsp Vegeta
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
8 Hungarian peppers
Sauté the onion in the lard for about 10 minutes until soft and translucent but don’t let them begin to brown. Add the garlic near the end. Off heat, stir in the paprika powder and cream. Cool slightly.
Mix the minced pork, cooled rice, cooled onion/garlic, egg, panade and seasonings. Best to do this by hand. See Notes below for tips on seasoning the stuffing.
Bring the prepared peppers to hand. Some people sprinkle a pinch of salt inside each before stuffing. I don’t do that all the time.
At this point, some people (including me) start the sauce and let it simmer a bit while they stuff the peppers - or stuff first and then do the sauce.
Stuff the peppers leaving about a half-inch at the top. The stuffing will increase slightly in size as the rice continues to cook and expand in the sauce so don’t stuff them too tightly. If you have leftover stuffing do one or both of the following - add more stuffing to the peppers and/or roll extra stuffing into meatballs.
Set them aside until you’re ready to add them to the sauce.
Tomato Sauce - using ingredients prepped as outlined above
4.5 cups San Marzano tomatoes whizzed
1 stalk celery
1 small onion halved
1 TB paprika cream
2-3 TB sugar
1 tsp Vegeta
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
(water)
Combine all these ingredients in a Dutch Oven. (The sugar is added to offset the tart taste of the tomatoes - add and adjust this to your taste.) Bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer.
Position the stuffed peppers into the pot. Some recipes say they should be standing upright - not necessary. What you do want is for them to be tucked together in a way that they will all be covered by the sauce. If necessary add some water to achieve this. (Some people add chicken broth.)
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Uncover and simmer for 15 minutes more.
The next step is to thicken the sauce a bit with a roux (see below). To do that you have to temporarily remove the stuffed peppers and set them aside for a few moments. Remove and discard the celery, onion halves and bay leaves.
Roux (Thickener)
2 TB butter
3 TB flour
sauce as necessary
1-2 tsp sugar
In a small pan, melt the butter and add the flour. (Easy Blend flour is great for this.) Stir just until the flour begins to lightly brown. This will thicken quickly. Keep adding some of the tomato sauce you made until it’s a looser consistency. Once you’ve achieved that it will be easier to add and stir this into the pot, thus thickening all the tomato sauce.
Carefully return the stuffed peppers to the sauce and warm them briefly.
Stuffed peppers are typically served with potato chunks dressed with salt, butter and chopped parsley. Enjoy!
Notes and Tips...
Peppers to Meat Ratio. Pepper sizes vary. It’s hard to predict how this ratio will work out. If you have leftover stuffing, roll it into round balls and add them to the sauce when the stuffed peppers are cooking.
Meat - this is usually made with minced pork though I’ve seen some recipes that use a mixture of pork and beef.
Hungarian vs Cubanelle Peppers; the latter are sometimes labelled as Hungarian but they are not and will not achieve the optimal flavour
Fresh or Frozen - peppers that have been frozen and thawed collapse; not ideal for this recipe so go with fresh - and that means this will be a seasonal dish. By mid-October in southern Ontario, they are gone. You can freeze these once cooked and then thaw and reheat them in the off-season.
Rice - my first trials used long grain but I preferred the outcome I got with medium grain; you could also use short grain
Salt and Pepper - is used at several stages of this recipe. Always best to err on the side of not enough salt - you can sprinkle extra salt when eating. You can fry up a tablespoon of the stuffing after mixing it to see if you are happy with the taste.
Hungarian Paprika Powder and Cream - Most recipes use sweet paprika, though I’ve seen some that use hot/spicy. Hungarians do not tend to use smoked paprika - that’s a Spanish tradition. Click here for more info re good quality paprika powder and the paprika cream.
Cooking - usually cooked stovetop though I’ve seen a few recipes that bake this in an oven.
Variations - some recipes do not add garlic; some add 2 instead of 1 egg; some do not add celery; some add other seasonings - ground caraway, nutmeg, marjoram, lemon zest.; some use bone broth instead of water to top up the sauce; some add no paprika to the meat or the sauce!!
TV Peppers - if you know a bit of Hungarian and look at some recipes online you might see this term. What does it mean? TV = "tölteni való", meaning to-be-stuffed.
For KB Recipe Attribution Practices please visit “Whose Recipe Is It?”
<== VISIT LATEST RECIPES to leave Questions, Comments or Likes! LOVE to hear from you!
You can personalize how this page PRINTS by copying and pasting the page URL into Print Friendly!