Tabooty Poblano Peppers Recipe

For these incredibly delicious filling chili, we stuffed the chili with southwestern spiced chicken, rice and cheese and bake in the oven until tender. Relax, delicious, a meal!

When you have a vegetable with a nice big cavity in the middle, the obvious thing is to stuff it! This recipe does this, layering lots of spiced chicken, cheese and fluffy rice into each pepper before baking until the pepper is soft and the cheese becomes irresistible.

Adam and I have been totally obsessed with these stuffed poblanos. They are the perfect independent dinner (they are a meal thanks to the rice). Aside from that, we often repurpose leftovers to quick and delicious tacos more quickly, chopping chili and stuffing them into warm tortillas. For more inspiration, explore our sausage-filled peppers or cheese-filled zucchini!

Key Ingredients

• Poblano Peppers: Poblano peppers are dark green, glossy peppers that are usually sold near bell peppers. They are not hot, but they have more heat than your typical sweet pepper. If you are sensitive to spices, substitute the green bell chili in the recipe below.
• Ground chicken: I love the mixture of ground breasts and chicken thighs, so I bought chicken with at least 7% fat. Even less, the chicken becomes too dry. Can be replaced with Türkiye, beef or pork at will.
• rice: I stirred 1 ½ cups of cooked rice into the filling, which made the remaining rice perfect for this dish. You can substitute cooked quinoa instead or list it as a low carb option. Your fill will be a little less, so consider adding ground chicken (about 1/2 pound) or filling less peppers than the ones shown in our photos.
• Onions, garlic and spices: We don’t give up on flavor as the filling tastes and sautéed onion and garlic with plenty of chili powder, chili powder (sweet, not smoked), cumin and oregano. Initially, the spices looked a lot, but once we whisk some sour cream and fresh lime, everything pops up and makes sense.
• corn: You can use raw corn kernels or frozen corn. I usually go to frozen corn because it is less prepared.
• lime: Fresh lime juice brings the whole dish together. So you will add a lot to the filling before stuffing into the Poblano Pepper. Then, once baked, you need to eat the stuffed chili with some lime wedges.
• sour cream: We don’t want a dry, crumbly filling, so to combine it all together, you whisk the sour cream into the spiced chicken. Everything will be different.
• cheese: You can use any melted mild cheese. Monterey Jack, Cheddar or my favorite Oaxaca Cheese are all great choices. If you see a smoky version of either of them, that would be great!

How to make stuffed poblano peppers

Three easy steps you are viewing this filled Poblano Peppers recipe: (1) Roast the pepper and remove the seeds(2) Make chicken stuffing(3) Fill and bake chili.

So the peppers will eventually become tender and you will need to bake them for about 30 minutes. When they bake, you can fill it and set it aside until the peppers are ready.

You have two options for preparing chili peppers. First, you can partially bake them to bake them a little bit, let them cool a little bit, then make a gap in the middle of one side to remove the seeds. I prefer this, but it adds some extra cooldown. The photo below shows how I did it (basically, I did the gap and then gently opened the peppers enough to put my spoon in there and scrape the seeds off).

Second, you can cut each pepper in half before partially baking. This will mean you may need a second baking dish because half of all peppers are not suitable. It’s easier to slice the peppers into thin slices, but you may get a little cumbersome later on thanks to the rectangular shape of the Poblanos.

Once stuffed with chili, you can add the cheese and bake for another 25 minutes and you can enjoy!