We’ve been talking about preparing this mental recipe for years. Without further ado, I give you delicious, spicy, lamb stuffed peppers.

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 15-20 minutes

Estimated servings: 4

Ingredients:

• One pound ground lamb
• 4 medium-sized bell peppers (green, red, yellow or orange)
• 1/2 red onion
• 1/2 white onion
• 1 jalapeño
• 3 green onions
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup shredded white sharp cheddar cheese
• 4 oz. cherry barbecue sauce
• Cilantro to taste (we used 4-6 stalks)
• Spices to taste (we used hot honey and a dash of Rattlesnake Dust)

Instructions:

• Preheat smoker/grill to 300°F using hardwood lump charcoal. Soak cherrywood smoking chips (this can be done up to 8 hours in advance to create the best smoke). Set up grill for indirect cooking/grilling (stone in place between charcoal fire and rack, or charcoal on either side of grill, not directly below rack).
• In a large non-stick pan on the stove, brown the ground lamb meat. When lamb is cooked, add 1/2 diced red onion, 1/2 diced white onion, 2 diced green onions and 1 diced jalapeño. Mix well and allow vegetables to cook for a few minutes.
• Add cherry barbecue sauce and your selected spices. Stir well to evenly disperse the flavors. Top with shredded cheeses and stir again.

• Divide mixture into four cored-out peppers and top with remaining diced green onion, cilantro and extra cheese if desired.
• Grill/smoke for 15-20 minutes on a flat pan.

• Serve hot, with a cold milk or beer.

Cooking lessons learned:

We used a small amount of olive oil in the pan to brown the ground lamb. Don’t. The meat has enough natural juices that it’s not needed. We spooned all that oil into a glass before the meat mixture went into peppers.

We overestimated the amount of peppers we could stuff with this ingredient list. See that we had eight peppers prepared? We only needed four. Which was great, because we only had three eaters.