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Halloween food can get complicated fast. Suddenly dinner involves food coloring, piping bags, three oven temperatures and ingredients you’ll use exactly once.
This isn’t that.
The stuffed peppers are basically taco night inside an orange bell pepper. The bean dip is the kind of thing you could make again for football on Sunday. And the fruit is a perfect fit for a Halloween side dish.
One oven. One temperature. Dinner.
Serves: 4 Oven: 375°F Total time: About 50 minutes
What you’ll need
For the jack-o’-lantern stuffed peppers
4 large orange bell peppers
1 pound ground beef
1 packet taco seasoning (use to taste)
1 cup cooked white rice
1 cup thick-and-chunky salsa (we used medium)
1/2 of a 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
Diced onion, optional, to taste
1 cup shredded Mexican-blend or cheddar cheese
Chopped green onion, for garnish, to taste
If carving bell peppers makes you nervous, buy a fifth. Worst case, you have an extra pepper.
For the spiderweb bean dip
1 15-ounce can refried beans
1 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup thick-and-chunky salsa (we used medium)
1 cup shredded Mexican-blend or cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1–2 teaspoons milk, only if needed
4 ripe black olives, for making two spiders
1 standard bag tortilla chips (about 10–12 ounces), for serving
For the orange-and-black fruit bowl
4–5 mandarins or clementines, peeled and separated
About 2 cups black grapes
1 cup blueberries or blackberries, optional
1 lime, cut into wedges
Tajín, for sprinkling
Before you start
Heat the oven to 375°F. That is the only oven temperature you will need for the entire dinner.
1. Get the rice going, then prep the peppers
If you’re starting with uncooked rice, make that first according to the package directions. Ours took about 20–25 minutes, so getting it going now keeps the rest of dinner moving.
You’ll need 1 cup cooked rice for the filling. Keep it warm while you prep everything else.
Once the rice is underway, move on to the peppers.
Cut the tops from the bell peppers and remove the seeds and membranes.
Now give each pepper a face.
This does not need to become pumpkin carving. Pick one fairly flat side and use a small paring knife to cut two triangle eyes and a simple mouth. Keep the openings relatively small so the peppers still hold their shape.
Set the carved peppers upright in a baking dish.
2. Make the pepper filling
Brown the ground beef in a large skillet and drain any excess fat. We added diced onion while the beef cooked for a little extra flavor; use as much or as little as you like.
Add taco seasoning to your preferred taste, then stir in:
the cooked rice
1/2 of a 15-ounce can black beans
1 cup thick-and-chunky salsa. We used medium; if you like more kick, go spicier.
Cook for another minute or two, just until everything is hot and combined.
For better texture: Stick with whole black beans here. We tested the filling with refried beans, and once they were mixed with the beef and rice, everything got a little too soft and paste-like. Whole black beans should give the filling more texture and a better bite.
Spoon the filling into the peppers and top each one with shredded cheese.
Finish with chopped green onion if you like. That is what we used on ours.
Put the pepper tops in the baking dish beside the peppers rather than sealing them on top. If your baking dish has extra room, the tops can also help brace the peppers and keep the jack-o’-lanterns standing upright.
Bake for about 20–25 minutes, checking them toward the end. You want the peppers softened but still standing upright. The filling is already cooked, so there’s no prize for turning the peppers into mush.
3. Make the bean dip while the peppers bake
In a small baking dish or pie plate, combine:
1 15-ounce can refried beans
1 15-ounce can black beans
1/2 cup thick-and-chunky salsa
Spread everything into an even layer and cover with shredded cheese.
When the peppers have about 15 minutes left, put the bean dip into the same 375°F oven.
Bake until the dip is hot and the cheese has melted, roughly 12–15 minutes.
No second temperature. No oven juggling.
4. Give it the spiderweb treatment
Let the hot dip sit for a few minutes.
Put the sour cream into a small zip-top bag. If it’s especially thick, stir in just enough milk to make it easier to squeeze. Snip a tiny corner from the bag.
Start with a small circle of sour cream in the center, then pipe eight lines from that circle out toward the edge of the dish.
Using the same zip-top bag, connect those lines with small drooping arcs, working your way around the dish until the web is complete.
That’s the web. We tried dragging a toothpick through the sour cream first, but it did not grab cleanly enough. Piping the whole design gave us better control.
It does not need to be perfect. In fact, if your spiderweb looks like it was made by an actual spider with questionable motor skills, you’re still doing fine.
For the spiders, place one whole black olive on the web for each body. Slice the remaining olives into thin strips for legs and tuck a couple on each side. We could only fit two legs per side on ours, and that looked just fine. This is dinner, not a special-effects department.
Serve with tortilla chips.
5. Put some cold fruit on the table
Combine the mandarin segments, black grapes and blueberries or blackberries in a serving bowl.
That’s it.
Do yourself a favor and try the fruit with lime and Tajín. We originally treated both as optional, but after making the whole dinner ourselves, this was the combination that made the fruit bowl. Squeeze a little lime over the fruit and add a light sprinkle of Tajín to taste.
Dinner is done
Put the peppers, warm bean dip, tortilla chips and fruit on the table together.
The Halloween part comes from a couple of small touches, not from turning dinner into another project you have to survive before trick-or-treating starts.
It also works especially well for Halloween night: there’s beef, beans, rice, cheese and fruit on the table before the kids head out for trick-or-treating and come home with a bag full of sugar. And everything here still tastes like food you’d make when it isn’t October.
Wizard-approved.
Our son Noah graced us with his presence during a brief break from Hogwarts and gave these jack-o’-lantern peppers his seal of approval. Ten points to Gryffindor.
