About three years ago if you had asked me to cook you something I would have thrown piece of chicken in the oven with some salt and pepper and olive oil and baked it. I hated cooking and wasn't very good at it. After I got married I started experimenting with cooking by following simple recipes, I started to enjoy watching my husband's face light up and gauged a recipe by how many MMMMM's I got from my husband. It just began to evolve from there........

Monday, August 23, 2010

Healthy Seafood Stuffed Hatch Peppers


One of the most popular things is to stuff a pepper, coat it, then fry it and when you cut into it have all the gooey cheese drip off the fork. However this is FAR from being healthy, so I decided to take a different approach in doing this to make it as healthy as possible but still have the 3 most important things that make this dish so tasty... Hatch peppers (duh), creamy flavor, and stuff it with seafood!!! So here's my take on this, seafood haters beware....

Ingredients:
12 Large mild hatch chilies (cleaned and are still in once piece, seeds do not need to be removed)
1 package (8 oz) Weight Watchers Cream Cheese (It has to be healthy right?)
1/2 lb salad shrimp
1/4 lb lump crab meat (the good stuff, not the claw meat where tendons are still in the meat)

Preparation:
I lined a large cookie sheet with foil and then used a cooling rack to elevate the peppers. This way it won't get all soggy as it warms evenly.

Next clean the shrimp and prep the crab and put into a small bowl. Then add the cream cheese (softened at room temperature) and mix with a spoon until everything is combined evenly. Don't be discouraged when you see the mix doesn't really show the crab, I guarantee the crab flavor will be there just fine.

Make a slit down the top of the pepper with a paring knife and using a spoon fill the pepper as completely as you can while still able to barely close it. If you put too much, don't worry this is where toothpicks can come in handy.

Once you've made all the peppers you can, stitch up any overstuffed ones with the toothpicks and prep the oven to approx 425 degrees. Put on the bottom part of the oven for about 12 min and then 2-3 min put on the top of the oven and turn it to the broiler setting.

Remove and plate immediately!

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