Pizza-Stuffed Peppers Are The Trick For A Keto-Friendly Pizza Night

Peppers are a perennially popular pizza ingredient. A 2021 analysis of Google search trends found this vegetable to be the top topping in both Maine and Louisiana. (The latter makes sense since bell peppers are part of the Cajun holy trinity, but you'd think Maine might have preferred lobstah if it wasn't wicked expensive.) If you're trying to cut down on carbs and follow the keto diet, though, this may mean that pizza of any variety is off the menu unless you happen to enjoy cauliflower crusts. There is another alternative, however, one that involves transforming peppers from a pizza topper into a kind of crust alternative.

You won't actually be using the peppers to make a dough, since unlike cauliflower, they're insufficiently starchy to use as a bread replacement. Instead, what you can do is to make stuffed bell peppers filled with the typical pizza ingredients of tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese instead of ground beef and rice. If you stir some diced pepperoni, cooked crumbled sausage, or even chunks of ham and pineapple into the mix, your stuffed peppers will be relatively pizza-adjacent without the high carb count.

Stuffed peppers really can't pretend to be anything other than what they are, but they can borrow some inspiration from other recipes, as we see above with the pizza-ish ones. The same marinara-mozzarella combo, in combination with ricotta and parmesan, can also be used to make lasagna-style stuffed peppers, while you could add diced cooked eggplant to our Greek stuffed pepper recipe to make a potato-free dish somewhat reminiscent of moussaka.

If you leave out the rice and beans and double the meat in our Mexican stuffed pepper recipe, you'll have a low-carb alternative to tacos. (Additional chopped tomatoes or avocados could also help to bulk up the dish while keeping it keto-friendly.) Yet another idea, if you're in the mood for Mexican food, is to make baked chiles rellenos substituting crushed chicharrones for the breadcrumbs. While chiles rellenos are typically made with poblano peppers, it's okay to use milder bell peppers if you're not a spicy food fan.