Japanese Stuffed Peppers

Japanese Stuffed Peppers are stuffed with delicious spiced meat loaded with Japanese herbs. Japanese green peppers (piman) are smaller than their US counterparts and you can often find “stuffed piman” served at izakayas as a snack along side a cold beer.

Japanese Stuffed Peppers, stuffed piman, are delicious peppers that can be baked, steamed, deep fried, or sautéed. They are simple to make and absolutely delicious.

Japanese green peppers, piman, are very thin and much smaller than their American counterparts.

An American Green Bell pepper on the left and 3 smaller Japanese green peppers on the right — A US grown Green Bell Pepper on the left and smaller Japanese Green peppers on the left

Piman are sweet but slightly bitter, and because of that children do not tend to enjoy them. Stuffed piman is often considered “bar food”- it’s usually ordered as a snack and not an entree.

If you don’t have access to Japanese piman you can substitute Jalapeño or banana peppers but be sure to remove all the seeds as this is not meant to be a spicy dish.

Japanese stuffed peppers are are relatively small and cook quickly. The meat should be crispy on the outside but soft on the inside. The pepper should cook up soft and juicy and the sauce is usually quite plain and a little bit sweet. I like to use V8 in place of tomato sauce although the sauce cooks up very thin. If you like it thicker you can mix in a teaspoon of potato starch dissolved in a quarter cup of warm water as a thickener.

When eating Japanese stuffed peppers, you can spoon some sauce over them and eat them with a pair of chopsticks. They are small enough to eat in a couple of bites.

I use chopped up Scallions, Shiso leaves and Myoga (Japanese Ginger) along with onion flakes, salt and pepper to flavor the meat. Add more herbs and spices to flavor the meat to your taste. If you want to serve this as an entree then white rice makes a great accompaniment, but you may want to try it as an appetizer or a small plate dish and enjoy it with other delicious treats.

Japanese Stuffed Green Peppers

These delicious stuffed green peppers can be cooked a variety of ways. The easiest way to cook up a large batch is in a deep fryer or in the oven. Add more shiso and myoga to taste and don’t be shy cook up a little test batch of meat until you get it just the way you like it. If you don’t have access to Japanese piman, look for peppers with a think skin that are not too spicy. You can also use a US Green Bell pepper, but cut it into at least 4 sections to ensure that the meat has plenty of surface area when cooking.

PREP	COOKING	YIELD
15 minutes	20 minutes	Serves 2-3

PREP	15 minutes
COOKING	20 minutes
YIELD	Serves 2-3

Ingredients:

6 Japanese Green Peppers

Filling

3/4 lb ground beef/pork/chicken
1/4 cup chopped scallion
1-2 bulbs myouga (Japanese ginger)
2-3 large shiso leaves
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 TBSP dried minced onion
1 egg

Sauce

2 cups chicken consommé
1 cup tomato based vegetable juice
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 deg F/180 deg C.
Slice the peppers in half from to bottom and remove seeds.
Prepare the filling. Chop up the myouga and shiso. Mix with the ground meat, scallion, salt, pepper, onion, and egg until well combined.
Prepare the sauce. Mix the vegetables juice, consommé, garlic powder and onion powder. Set aside.