Super yummy stuffed peppers (by popular demand)

Good AM foodies ! I have a wonderful recipe to share with you. It doesn’t take too much time to prepare and serves as wonderful leftovers. This was my first time making this recipe that I found on the food network. The recipe originally called for turkey sausage and farro. Farro is a food product composed of the grains of certain wheat species. The exact definition is debated. It is sold in a dried product and is prepared by cooking it in water until its soft,(many recommend first soaking overnight). It may be eaten plain, although it is often used as an ingredient in dishes such as salads & soups.

I chose to alter the recipe to my liking because last week’s food challenge called for veggies and to limit starches.

Here are the ingredients:

– 4 large bell peppers sliced in half, hollowed out with the tops cut off

– 2 Italian sausage links (purchased in the casing but the casing will have to be removed)

– 2 sweet sausage links (purchased in the casing but the casing will have to be removed)

– 1 medium sized zucchini cut into quarters (green)

– 1 medium sized squash cut into quarters (yellow)

– 1 cup of finely diced red, yellow, green. orange bell peppers (I actually bought 8 peppers, and cut them in half, saved the other halves and then diced these…if that makes since)

– 2 cans of diced tomatoes

– 1/2 a yellow onion (diced)

– 1 & 1/2 handfuls of kraft or store brand 5 cheese blend

– 1 dash of sea salt

– 1 dash of course ground pepper

– 1 dash of crushed red pepper

– 1 dash of Italian seasoning 

– 1/2  teaspoon of coconut oil

– 1/2 handful of finely cut fresh basil

1. I first cut my peppers in half, hollowed them and placed them in my fav red roasting pan.

(Sorry I couldn’t rotate the picture)

2. I cut my sausage length wise and removed them from their casing and browned the meat in the frying pan with a 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil. Be careful because once you brown your meat, it’ll be a tad greasy and you’ll want to drain the grease off before you add your veggies. I also seasoned my meat with sea salt, pepper, Italian seasoning. Your veggies will be a little water filled because they’re veggies so keep that in mind as well. when they cook. Once the meat was browned well I added the veggies and then the 2 cans of tomatoes.

 

 

3. Once all my filler was cooked well, my veggies were sauteed, my meat browned well with all the seasonings. I then spooned them into the hollowed peppers. 

 

4. From there I put them in the top rack of my preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes with aluminum foll tightly wrapped. Once I removed them from the oven I noticed that not only did my pepper filling cook (and you could tell b/c the contents will bubble,) so you have to be careful because the juice from the tomatoes will be very hot, but the peppers were slightly charred around the edges where I sliced the tops off.  From there I added my 5 cheese Italian blend (Parmesan, low fat mozzarella, Romano, Asiago, and Provolone)

6. From there I put my peppers back in the oven uncovered for 5 minutes until I noticed that the cheese had melted well and had created a nice crust over the sausage filling and peppers. 

 

and ladies and gents…once again Voila…stuffed peppers.

Enjoy !