Italian Sausage Stuffed Peppers
Baked bell peppers provide a single dish meal packed with sausage, rice, Parmesan cheese, and Italian seasonings.
Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 1/4 lb mild Italian sausage
- 3/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
- 1 1/2 cup purchased marinara sauce
- 2 cups cooked white rice I use Uncle Ben's Ready Rice which cooks in 90 seconds)
- 3 bell peppers (red, green, yellow or combination) halved vertically with stems & seeds removed
- chopped fresh basil, if desired
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet and saute onion until tender, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and saute 1 additional minute. Add sausage, crumbling it as it cooks until no pink remains.While sausage is cooking, fill a Dutch oven with water deep enough to cover pepper halves and bring to boil. Blanch pepper halves for 5 minutes (I cooked my peppers in 2 batches.) Place blanched peppers on a cutting board to cool briefly. Note – the end result after baking will be a crisp-tender pepper.If you prefer a softer pepper, blanch for a few additional minutes.Add Parmesan, marinara sauce and prepared rice to the cooked sausage mixture and stir well to combine. Stuff mixture into pepper halves and place in baking dish. Pour water into the dish to a depth of about 1 inch. Bake peppers for 30 minutes. Garnish with fresh chopped basil if desired.
Notes
This recipe is based on a single pepper half as a serving. However, I would suggest an entire pepper per person for more hearty appetites.