Dirty Rice and Roasted Pepper Casserole

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp. grapeseed oil
• 1 small sweet yellow onion, diced
• 6-7 cloves of garlic
• 1 1/2 lb. ground buffalo meat
• 1 habanero pepper, minced
• 6 large Anaheim, Hatch, or Poblano peppers
• 16 oz. vegetable or beef stock – you may not use all the liquid
• 1 cup white rice (you can also use brown, but white rice works much better in this recipe)
• 1 14 oz. can stewed tomatoes
• about 12 oz. of cheese
• about 2 tsp. Tony Chachere
• 1/2 tsp. Onion powder
• 1/2 tsp. Garlic powder
• 2 tsp. dried parsley flakes
• 1/4 tsp. Red pepper flakes
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

• First follow the recipe for roasting peppers – its super easy.  Pre heat the broiler.  While it is heating up, line chili peppers onto a baking sheet.  Let the chiles cook until the skin is mostly charred (about 7 min) and then turn them over.  Once both sides are charred take them out of the oven and immediately place them in a Ziploc bag and seal.  The chiles need to sweat now, so let them sit in the Ziploc a minimum of 20 minutes.  It doesn’t matter if they sit longer.  Once the chiles are done sweating, you can peel of the skin very easily and scrape out the seeds.
• Turn the oven heat to 400.
• For the dirty rice, heat up a copper pot.  Pour grapeseed oil in the pan and then throw in your onions, garlic, and habanero.  They only need about two minutes to simmer then toss in the ground beef.  Stir the mixture on medium to high heat until the meat is just about cooked.
• Pour the rice into the pot and stir.  Once the rice begins to stick, start to add beef broth, about a cup at a time.  I cook this kind of like a risotto… I let it sit for a couple minutes and I continually add liquid and scrape up the bottom of the pan as I do it.
• While the rice is cooking add your seasonings listed above. Here is the part where I am going to be a little vague with you – TASTE AS YOU GO!
• Once the dirty rice is finished, you can spoon it out onto a pyrex glass baking container and layer the roasted peppers on top.  Sprinkle cheese over the top of the peppers and place into the oven for about 15-20 min until the cheese is melted and starts to turn golden brown.  Then take out and serve!!!!