Rice & Beef-Stuffed Poblano Peppers

This week Andrew and I got our first shipment of meals with Blue Apron! Currently, I am obsessed with this program. The food is really fresh (we weren't sure how that would work with it being shipped) and tastes amazing! You can see all of my thoughts on the company on my previous post.

Last night we made the Rice & Beef-Stuffed Poblano Peppers. The recipe was so easy and tasted incredible. Here is a picture of the finished product! There was so much in each serving that I had plenty of leftovers for lunch today.

What I really like about this recipe is that it only took 40 minutes to prepare and was 625 calories.

To get started, the following ingredients were needed (all shipped in the correct portion amount):

8 ounces ground beef

1/2 cup long grain white rice

3 cloves garlic

2 poblano peppers

1 lime

1 yellow onion

1 bunch cilantro

3 T dried zante currants

3 T roasted pepitas

2 T tomato paste

2 t ground cumin

1/4 c mexican crema

Here are the directions:

1. In a small pot add rice, 1 c water and a tsp of salt. Heat to boiling (on high) 

2. Once boiling, cover and reduce to low heat and simmer for ~15 minutes (or until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender). 

3. Remove from heat and fluff the rice with a fork.

4. Simultaneously, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. 

5. Wash and dry the fresh produce  

6. Peel and mince the garlic.

7. Peel and dice the onion

8. Pick the leaves off the cilantro and discard stems

9. Quarter the lime

10. Place poblano peppers on sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper (make sure well coated)

11. Roast in oven for 7 minutes (or until skin is browned and blistered)

12. Remove from oven and set aside to cool; leave the oven on

13. When cool, cut lengthwise slit in each poplano pepper and remove and discard the ribs and seeds (wash your hands immediately after)

14. While the peppers cool, use a large pan and heat 2 tsp of olive oil on medium heat until hot

15. Once heated, add the garlic and onion and cook (stir frequently) for 3 minutes (until toasted and fragrant)

16. Increase the heat to medium high and add the ground beef. Season with salt and pepper

17. Cook, frequently break the meat apart, for 4 minutes (until browned and cooked through)

18. Stir in currants, pepitas, cooked rice and 1/4 c water for 1-2 minutes and season with salt and pepper

19. stuff each prepared poblano pepper with as much filling as possible and bake 4-6 minutes

20. while the peppers are cooking take a small bowl and combine the mexican crema, the juice of 2 lime wedges and half of the cilantro with 1 T of water

21. Divide the finished poblano peppers and any remaining filling between two plates

22. Top with lime-crema sauce and garnish with remaining cilantro and lime wedges

Let me know what you think!

Kristin

Raspberry Limeade Granita from Southern Living Magazine!

Now that summer is in full swing in Charleston I decided to try out new cocktail recipes. Yesterday, I made a Raspberry Limeade Granita and so far this is my absolute favorite. The recipe came in my Southern Living magazine and it centers on fresh fruit!

It was so easy to prepare but does take about 5 hours to make (since you freeze the ingredients). I made a few variations to the printed recipe so I will include mine below!

Ingredients:

1 cup raspberries

1/2 cup strawberries

1/2 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice (about 4 limes)

1 1/2 cups simple syrup (recipe below)

1 shot of rum per glass served 

1/4 cup fresh blueberries

Process the raspberries, strawberries, lime juice and simple syrup in a food processor until smooth. Pour into bowl that is freezer safe. Freeze 4 to 5 hours and stir ~1 time per hour so mixture looks like this:

When ready to serve scoop out mixture for glass and pour over 1 shot of rum. Then, garnish with fresh blueberries!

This was delicious and a hit with my friends so I definitely recommend trying this one out. 

The simple syrup recipe is below!

Simple Syrup:

Ingredients: 

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

Boil both ingredients in a saucepan over high heat. Once ingredients begin to boil stir constantly until sugar is dissolved. Then, remove pan from heat and allow to cool completely before using.

Let me know what you think and if you do any variations to the recipe!

Kristin

New Dinner Recipe!

I have to confess that I really love to cook (and bake) but sometimes I struggle to come up with new recipes. I almost always find myself in a rut where I want to make the same things over and over (and that gets really boring).

So, Andrew surprised me this week by signing us up for Blue Apron. I have really wanted to do this for awhile but was hesitant because it isn't the cheapest option (it costs about $10/per person/per meal). But, we now have a 3 meal/week subscription!

Our first shipment arrived yesterday and I made our first meal: Squid Ink Linguine Pasta last night! The packaging was really awesome (everything was very cold) and it came with an introduction letter that gave me an overview of the recipes for the week.

I made the Squid Ink Linguine Pasta last night since they recommended that you cook any seafood before moving on to other dishes.

All of the ingredients were so fresh and the recipe only took a collective 30 minutes to prepare!  I have listed out many of the pros of the Blue Apron experience/meal below:

1. Quick recipe that is easy to prepare with very few steps  (you can watch video tutorials on each step - I haven't yet so not sure on quality)
2. Very fresh ingredients
3. Convenience - they literally sent everything I needed (with the exception of olive oil and I already had that in the house)
4. It was basically a mini cooking class (I have never tried this type of dish before (or any of the three meals this week) so I learned a lot while cooking!
5. Restaurant Quality - living in Charleston means we have a lot of really amazing restaurants and this dish was on par or better than many of them!

To be fair, I have included the cons below:

1. A little on the expensive side (but you are paying for the convenience and quality)
2. Instructions are a little hard to read (this may be a personal preference but I prefer bullet points as compared to lengthy paragraphs with multiple steps)


Overall this dish was amazing (picture below)! I am so excited to try the other meals and pick out the options for next week!

I am curious if anyone else has tried Blue Apron as well? A ton of people asked  me to share my experience but I would love to know if anyone has used it for several months!


- Kristin