Stuffed Capsicum (bharva shimla mirch)

Stuffed vegetables like Stuffed Capsicum (bharva shimla mirch) add charm to your dinning table! Though preparation takes slightly longer time, but the end result is really really good. Stuffed Capsicum (bharva shimla mirch) can be done with boiled potatoes, paneer, roasted gram flour or simply with some spices of your choice.

From my childhood, I had always liked boiled potatoes filled stuffed capsicum a lot. I have experienced that the taste of capsicum is not much appreciated by everyone, but if you serve it in stuffed form, people really like it. After our marriage, in Chennai Manish and I had invited some of  his colleagues at home and I had cooked stuffed capsicum and I remember that everyone liked it a lot!
In Bangalore also my dear friend Padmaja had called me once to her house to cook stuffed capsicum, so that she can see the entire process.

Not exaggerating, but my mother-in-law also very much likes stuffed capsicum prepared by me. Once I packed for her when they were going back to Jaipur from Bangalore and got rave reviews.

So now you have enough reasons to give stuffed capsicum a try……

There is one more post in the blog in the category of stuffed vegetables, you can take a look at Stuffed chillies

Ingredients :

Green Capsicum

Potatoes

Finely chopped green chillies

Oil

Spices: salt, red chilli powder, dry mango powder(amchoor), garam masala, asafoetida(hing) and turmeric powder.

Process :

Boil potatoes in pressure cooker. Never let potatoes become over boiled where they get a big crack in between – this way water seeps in and they become soggy.

Keep boiled potatoes in a strainer so that all water seeps out.

Peel potatoes and once they cool down, add all spices, mash them and mix everything together.

Heat a pan and add 1-2 spoons of oil and add ready mix of boiled potatoes. Keep on turning them upside-down from time to time to avoid potatoes sticking to the pan. Don’t add too much oil here as we just have to roast them lightly for 10 minutes.

Potatoes will stick to the pan as we have added only couple of spoons of oil. To avoid this use small pan support – it’s very helpful in slow cooking.

Once they are done, let them cool down.

Wash and dry capsicum. Always buy  vertically shaped small sized capsicum for preparing stuffed capsicum. With vertical shape,  it’s easy to deseed them.

To remove seeds, make a vertical cut.

Fill in the prepared potato filling. Don’t stuff too much filling, otherwise while cooking it will start seeping out.

Heat the pan and add 4-5 spoons of oil, spreading all over the pan. Next, place all the stuffed capsicums and cover the pan.

Stuffed capsicum should be cooked on sim heat, so you can use small pan support again.

Keep on turning them upside-down till they are tender from all sides and done.

Serve with roti, plain paratha or rice.