Sausage and Rice Stuffed Peppers

I don’t know about you, but I occasionally get a serious hankering for stuffed peppers. Lately I’ve been wanting to try something a little different. I found a recipe by Martha Stewart and I while I’m not a huge fan of hers, I decided to give it a try with a few alterations. This turned out so good. I like cutting the peppers down so that you don’t have as much pepper to eat in one sitting.

Servings: 4-6
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
3 1/2 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
1 diced zucchini
1 diced squash
1 diced medium yellow onion
1 minced garlic
1/2 oz. Parmesan, grated (1/4 cup)
4 cups cooked long-grain white rice
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
4 large bell peppers (any color), halved lengthwise, seeds and ribs removed
salt and ground pepper

If your family is like mine, and they don’t like zucchini and squash, (if you have a food processor) after step 4 you can remove the meat mixture from the pan, put it in the food processor, blend the meat mixture with the zucchini and squash. This solves to problems:
1] If you didn’t get the meat chopped up into small pieces, this takes care of that!
2] Breaks the squash and zucchini down so that is neither noticeable by the eye or the tongue. 🙂

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a large skillet, heat 1 teaspoon oil over medium-high.
3. Add in onion and sausage.
4. Allow them to cook for 3-4 minutes.
5. Add in the garlic, zucchini, and squash and allow those to soften while the sausage finishes browning.
6. Mix your rice and meat together. Then, add in the parmesan cheese and mix until evenly distributed.
7. Fill each pepper half and place on cooking dish.
8. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top of the meat/rice mixture. Then, take a butter nonstick spray and spray the breadcrumbs down. This will allow the breadcrumbs to brown up.
9. Cook for about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them to make sure the breadcrumb topping doesn’t burn. If it’s starts to get too brown, loosely place a piece of foil over the food while it finishes cooking.

 

If you’re looking for a crockpot stuffed pepper recipe, check out Shaunta’s recipe here.

~Adapted from Food Everyday