Authentic Greek Stuffed Peppers Like Gia-Gia Made for Me!

In this video, I’m sharing a deeply personal and authentic Greek recipe that’s been passed down through generations—Greek stuffed peppers (Gemista), just like my beloved Gia-Gia used to make.

If you liked this video please consider watching my other delicious recipes on YouTube.
This isn’t just a recipe—it’s a taste of my childhood, my heritage, and the warmth of family meals shared around the table, and especially with true friends.
Using simple, fresh ingredients like ripe bell peppers, seasoned rice, aromatic herbs, and optional ground meat, I’ll show you step-by-step how to make Greek stuffed peppers the traditional way. No shortcuts. No fancy twists. Just real, homemade Greek food made with love.
Whether you’re Greek, part-Greek, or just love authentic Mediterranean cooking, this recipe brings you right into a Greek kitchen, where time slows down and food means connection.

French Onion Soup https://youtu.be/tLpusOl5ia0
Tourlou https://youtu.be/bDN3qmap0I8
Tom Kah Gai https://youtu.be/pt-g90YMSKw
Morrocan Chicken Tagine https://youtu.be/cMh8ayUpmX4
Mongolian beef stir fry https://youtu.be/2WxfVdAnFBA

THE RECIPE:
7 medium to large capsicums (Bell Peppers)
2-3 cups of tomato pasata
500gm/1.10lb of heart smart minced beef (I prefer this mince but you can use any other you like)
Plenty of olive oil
2 finely chopped medium brown onions
3/4 cup of basmati rice (or long grain rice if you prefer)
1/2 cup of chopped fresh parsley
salt/pepper to your taste
3 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
5 medium potatoes peeled and cut into wedges
1.5 tsp of mild paprika

Sautee the onions over low heat and translucent, add the mince meat increase heat to medium-high and brown it whilst mixing constantly. Once the meat has some caramalisation add the rice some salt and pepper, and the tomato pasata over medium heat. Mix thoroughly. Keep adding stock for the rice to absorb and cook. Keep an eye on it to ensure there’s enough liquid. Once the rice is almost cooked, take off the heat and allow to cool down. For the potatoes in a large container add some salt, olive oil and the paprika. Toss them to make sure they are fully coated in the mixture. Next take the tops of the capsicums and clean the inside from all the seeds and the pith. place them in a large oven pan and spread the potatoes in there as well. Next fill the capsicums with the stuffing mixture to almost full (leave a little space because the rice will expand as it finishes cooking. Once all done cove with some silver aluminium foil and place in a pre heated fan forced oven at 180C/356F for 1 hour. After the hour of cooking remove the aluminium foil pour more olive oil on the food and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Done.
Bon Appetite

Hello, Alex here from Everyday Food Cooked 
Every Day. Today we’re in for a treat from the Greek cuisine yemista, which literally 
means to fill or they’re full. Of course, I’m talking about stuffed capsicums. They’re 
easy to make and they’re delicious to eat. So, here we go. Let’s start. Enjoy. It just dawned 
on me that I tend to say unbelievably delicious and everything’s delicious. But to me and my 
palette, they are because I’ve been cooking these foods for years and my family love 
them. I love them. My friends love them. So, they’re delicious and they’re very easy to make. 
They’re very family friendly. They’re I try to make them as healthy as I can as well. Okay, 
let’s start. I’m going to dice these onions and I’ll get going from there. Okay, I’ve 
peeled the onions. So, now we’ll start. We’ll start to dice them. Now, every time I peel an onion, prepping it for 
food, obviously, I think of Shrek in um I think it was the first movie, the Shrek movie. He says 
that ogres are like onions. They’ve got layers. I don’t know why I said that, but it reminds me of 
Shrek. Oh dear. All right, let’s continue with the job at hand. I’ll um I’ll continue with um the 
dicing nice and finely diced because you know they need to be fine because they are going to go 
into the capsicums. You don’t want them chunky. Okay, I’ll get back to you when it’s all 
done. Okay, the onions have been diced. So, next I’m going to finally chop up this parsley 
and we’re going to start the cooking process. We’re ready to go. I’ve got my parsley, 
my onions, 3/4 of a cup of basmati rice, hot smoked mint, some chicken stock, salt and 
pepper. So, we’ll start the cooking process. So, I’ve got my oil in the frying pan. So, 
the first thing I’ll do is I’ll add the onions. Let let the magic begin. So, we’ll sauté them for a few minutes. And and once that’s done, 
I’ll add I’ll add the meat, parsley as as as as it cooks down and the 
rice. So the onions have sautayed nicely. We don’t want to completely cook them 
because don’t forget we’re going to stuff the capsicums and the cooking 
process will continue in the oven. So, they’re partially cooked. Um, 
so now I’ll add the the mints and cook that off as well. Okay, so here we go. 
Very good quality mint. half mark very low fat. So break it up. Keep waking it in. And I’m going to drop the heat a little 
bit because I I want this I don’t want to rush this. I want to start a little bit of 
caramelization where the flavor is in the meat. So, but to do it correctly, you need to be 
patient with it and and um and take your time. So, it’s starting to brown a little 
bit, but if you look carefully, I don’t know if you can see it. A lot of the 
water is starting to evaporate from the mints, which is what I want. And um we’ll just keep 
working it until it browns completely and a little bit of caramelization starts to happen. 
And then we’ll add the other ingredients. There we go. It’s ready. A little bit of browning 
happening here. So now we can add the rest of the ingredients. Well, before I do that, how 
about if we add about half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon or a little 
bit more maybe of pepper. Add the rice, 3/4 of a cup, and mix that in thoroughly. Now, here I’ve got some tomatoes that I’m 
going to put in that and I mixed them a little bit with some chicken stock to add 
a bit more flavor. So, they go in as well. Glaze the pot if you can with 
a little bit of the juice. And then, you know, next I will add the parsley, 
but I’ll wait a little bit. And some more chicken stock. Because the rice is cooking, it’s 
going to absorb a lot of the liquid. So, it needs more liquid to be supplemented. Okay. 
So, we’re starting to boil. I’ll turn the heat up. I’m going to add the parsley and mix it all in. And then let it let it cook. 
Um, and as the rice absorbs the liquid, I’ll add more chicken stock in. And I don’t want to fully 
cook it. Don’t forget the this stuffing mixture is going to go in the capsicums and the cooking 
process will be finished up in the oven. So, we’ll just persevere. Keep an eye on it because 
we definitely don’t want to overcook the rice, but we want to make sure that there’s 
enough liquid for them as well. Okay, here we go. It’s ready. It’s not fully cooked 
yet. Almost cooked. So, now I turn the heat off, let it cool down. Um, I’ve got some potatoes as 
well, which I’ve cut in wedges, and I’ll show you what I’ll do with them in a minute. And then 
the whole thing will go into a big oven dish, covered with some silver foil, and it’ll go in the 
oven. And that’s it. There we go. Potatoes wedged, cut in wedges. What I’m going to do 
now is I’m going to add some paprika, a little bit of salt, little bit of olive oil, and and mix it all together. And there you go. Potatoes are ready to go in 
the oven. So, next I’ll I will show you what I do with the capsicums. There’s one of my red 
capsicums. I’ll tell you a little trick about them. See the bottom? One, two, three, four. They 
sit nicely in the pan. If they’ve only got three, they will fall. So try to get ones with 
at least four so they can fit in the pan. So what I do now is I get a knife and um 
I’ll just cut the lid off. Now I’ve seen people just cut it like that. I prefer 
to do it this way. It’s a lot neater. And what I’ll do is I’ll clean all 
that out. Trim that off. And there’s one capsicum ready. Then they’ll get start um 
stuffed with the mixture that I’ve made. And um we’ll put them in the oven. Okay. And 
what I was telling you before about about the um the bottom when I got the green cap scams, 
I could not find these are glass house grown and I think that’s the reason. could not 
find something that would just sit like the red ones do. It’ll fall. But what I’ll 
do is I’ll wedge it in between them and and um I’ll fill them in like that. Okay. And what 
I’ll do now is I’ll I’ll add the potatoes in there. I’ll spread them out. And once that’s all 
happening, I’ll I’ll fill the capsicums and I’ll cover them up. put some more liquid in some 
tomato juice in and um cover them up and they go in the oven. There’s one of the capsicums. I 
will fill it in with the rice and meat stuffing. Now, don’t overfill it because 
don’t forget as the rice cooks in the oven because it’s not fully 
cooked, it’s going to expand. So, make sure you leave some room for the rice to 
expand. Put the lid back on and that’s done. And then I’ll do the rest and I’ll get back 
to you. There we go. You got the potatoes, capsicums. They’re all stuffed. They’re all 
full of stuffing. I’ve got a little bit of What I did was I opened up a can of tomatoes. I 
pureeed it and I mixed it with a little bit of chicken stock as well and um adjusted the 
seasoning. So that just goes in as well. This recipe loves olive oil. So I’m going 
to put a fair bit of olive oil on it. So next I do is I’ll cover 
it up with some silver foil. And the recipe is going to cook at 170° centigrade 
for 1 and 1/2 hours. And about an hour into it, I’m going to take this foil off. And um I’m going 
to take the foil off and continue cooking it for the remainder of the half hour. That’s it. It’s 
done. It’s covered in silver foil. It’s going in the oven at 170° centigrade for 1 and 1/2 hours. 
After an hour, I’ll take the silver foil off, put back in the oven for the last half hour. 
I forgot to mention that this whole recipe and some quirky facts about this recipe um 
will all be listed in in the notes. So, feel free to download and copy it if you like 
it and you want to do it. It’s well worth it, I must tell you. Okay, there we go. One and a half 
hours later, the um capsicums are fully cooked and the rice looks absolutely done. Totally. Well, classic classic Greek cuisine potato, nicely salted flavors there. the texture. Perfect 
meal. And I’m going to serve it again with the excuse me, I’m going to serve it again with um 
some finely chopped up lettuce and some white onion. And all I’m going to put in there is a 
little bit of olive oil, some salt, and some white wine vinegar. And that’ll be the meal. If you like 
my videos and um you enjoy what I’m cooking, then please consider subscribing to my channel and drop 
me a line up. I’d love to hear from you. And um yeah, that’s it. Again, another great meal. Thank 
you for your time. Have a great afternoon wherever you are because it’s certainly afternoon here. And 
um until the next time. Bye-bye, Alex. Bye-bye.