Stuffed Peppers in Sour Cream Sauce

Name: Baked Stuffed Peppers in Sour Cream Sauce (Pork and Rice)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: Bulgarian cuisine
Ingredients: Round peppers (gogoshari, kolobok or similar) 6; Basmati rice 4 tbsp (55 g); Pork 300 g; Onion 1; Sour cream 1-1.5 cups (200–300 g); Fresh herbs (dill, parsley) to taste; Olive oil 4 tbsp; Salt, freshly ground black pepper, coriander, savory, hot pepper to taste

☆ Rate it

1 h 30 mins

I remember that as a child, when everything seemed different, I didn’t like sweet Bulgarian peppers; they seemed watery to me. But baked stuffed peppers with rice and pork, with sour cream and parsley, were truly a favorite dish. In fact, I love stuffed peppers in any form. In the season, when peppers are plentiful, we make this dish quite often.

By the way, for understandable reasons I also avoided hot chili peppers as a child. But peppers stuffed with pork in a tomato or sour milk sauce are always an event. Many people put off making such dishes, thinking they are complicated and time-consuming. That is a mistake.

For some reason, I loved the round peppers with ribbed, slightly crumpled skin that grew in my grandmother’s vegetable garden. They were called “gogoshari” or ratunda. In season you can buy such peppers now, or similar ones. At the local market I bought several round peppers that looked like gogoshari; they were sold as “kolobok”. I can’t say whether that name is right, but the peppers were perfect for stuffing and then stewing in homemade sour cream.

The lobed surface of these round peppers is usually mottled red and green. Often they were pure red or pure green, or with a touch of yellow. Gogoshari or similar peppers were used for all kinds of salads, above all. They were often pickled and even fermented in barrels. But the favorite dish made from gogoshari peppers was baked stuffed peppers stewed in sour cream.

By and large, baked stuffed peppers can be made with any peppers, but round ones are very convenient for even baking. The stuffing usually consists of fried onion, pork and rice. Sometimes a small amount of fried vegetables is added: carrot, pepper, tomato pulp. And the filling is always made aromatic and spicy with spices and dried herbs. Baked stuffed peppers additionally stewed in homemade sour cream turn out exceptionally delicious.

8 ingredientsTo the recipe

More with bell peppers and rice

Stuffed Peppers with Pork and Rice in Tomato Sauce

1 h 30 min

Baked Stuffed Peppers with Ground Beef and Gruyère

1 h

Chicken Stuffed Peppers

1 h 30 min

Vegetable Cabbage Rolls

1 h

Vegetable Bulgur Pilaf

1 h

Ingredients

6 peppers

Round peppers (gogoshari, kolobok or similar) 6
Basmati rice 4 tbsp
(55 g)
Pork 300 g
Onion 1
Sour cream 1-1.5 cups
(200–300 g)
Fresh herbs (dill, parsley) to taste
Olive oil 4 tbsp
Salt, freshly ground black pepper, coriander, savory, hot pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

Turn on cook modeKeeps your screen from turning off while the recipe is open

Choose the number of peppers so that they all fit in the baking dish or sauté pan where they will cook. Baked stuffed peppers are made in two stages: baking the stuffed peppers, then stewing them in homemade sour cream. It’s best to do both stages in the same dish without moving the peppers to another one.
For the filling we traditionally use a mixture of fried onion, pork and boiled rice with Balkan spices. We use the same filling for homemade cabbage rolls. For six round peppers such as gogoshari or kolobok, 250-300 g of lean pork (leg or shoulder), a third of a cup of rice (180 g) (we prefer fragrant basmati) and one medium onion are enough.
Wash the peppers thoroughly and dry them with a napkin or towel. With a sharp knife cut out a “lid” with the stem around the stalk. Very carefully, so as not to damage the pepper, shake out the seeds and, if possible, clear the partitions out of the cavity with your fingers through the opening. Cut the seeds off the lid. The peppers are baked together with their lids, so be careful not to mix up the peppers and their “own” stems.
Pour 0.5 l of cold water over the fragrant basmati rice and put it on the heat. There is no need to aim for fluffy rice, so you don’t have to keep to exact proportions of water and rice or rinse it. Just boil the rice in plenty of water until almost done. Drain the water and put the cooked rice in a colander.
Trim the pork of membranes and bones and grind it in a meat grinder. Peel the onion and dice it finely. Heat 3 tbsp olive oil in a lidded sauté pan and fry the onion until it starts to turn a pleasant golden color.
As soon as the onion starts to change color, add the ground pork and mix it carefully and thoroughly with the onion. It’s important that the pork doesn’t form lumps. Stir the meat with a wooden spatula, letting it brown evenly. You can simply crush any lumps so that the meat and onion are uniform.
Salt the filling to taste and add spices. Often, when stuffing peppers, people stop at salt and black pepper, which is usually enough. We are used to the spices of Bulgarian cooking, so we always add ground coriander, dried savory or the Bulgarian blend “sharena sol” to the filling. We add plenty of aromatic spices so that the filling is spicy and the baked stuffed peppers have a pronounced flavor.
Stir the ground meat and add the boiled rice right away. Mix the meat with the rice. Since the rice was boiled without salt or spices, you can add a little more salt to the filling to taste. Cover the pan with a lid and let the filling steam for 4-5 minutes over low heat. Then turn the heat off.
Carefully stuff the gogoshari peppers through the opening, fairly tightly if you like. It’s important that the filling doesn’t stand in a mound. Close each stuffed pepper with its lid and secure it with 1-2 toothpicks, otherwise the filling will most likely fall out during cooking.
Grease a baking dish of suitable size with olive oil and thoroughly grease all the stuffed peppers too. Arrange the peppers in the dish and put it in an oven preheated to 220°C. The stuffed peppers heat up quite quickly and start to bake.
Turn the peppers over with a spoon. Since the lids are fixed with toothpicks, there is no need to worry that the filling will fall out. Bake the stuffed peppers until the pepper walls are completely soft and the surface starts to change color and wrinkle.
If liquid has collected in the dish with the baked stuffed peppers, carefully pour it off. Be careful, the peppers are very hot. Spoon rich homemade sour cream over the peppers. Spread the sour cream thoroughly over the baked peppers. Don’t use store-bought sour cream; it will most likely curdle, which will spoil the look of the finished dish.
Put the dish back in the oven and let the baked stuffed peppers cook further. From the moment the sour cream starts to boil, the peppers cook for 15-20 minutes. During this time the sour cream cooks down and the total amount of liquid in the dish shrinks considerably. Spoon the liquid from the dish over the baked peppers 2-3 times.
Put the finished gogoshari, the baked stuffed peppers, on plates. Pour the remaining sour cream sauce over them. Alternatively, if there is little sauce, spread a layer of homemade sour cream on the bottom of the plate and set the peppers on it. Carefully remove the toothpicks that held the lids on.
Sprinkle the sauce and the baked stuffed peppers with finely chopped herbs and coarsely ground dried hot pepper.
Round baked stuffed gogoshari peppers with sour cream sauce should be served only hot. As they cool, the taste changes a lot, and sour cream doesn’t like being reheated.