Italian Sausage and Peppers

For everyone!

Feel free to make this with genuine Italian pork sausage. At The Twisted Challah, everyone is welcome.

But …

There are three really great things about vegetarian Italian sausage.

1. Vegetarians can have Italian sausage.

2. People who keep kosher can have Italian sausage.

3. It tastes really good. Even to people who eat real Italian pork sausage.

Sausage and peppers is a very versatile dish. You can use it to stuff a loaf of Italian semolina bread to make sausage and peppers heroes (subs, grinders, whatever you call them in your neck of the woods). Topping the heroes with some mozzarella and baking them until the cheese is melted is optional.

This dish is excellent as it is and doesn’t need red sauce. The olive oil and garlic combined with the juices from the onions, peppers, and sausage eliminates the need for any other sauce. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t add some good tomato sauce if you’d like to do that. It all depends upon how you want to serve it. Combine sausage and peppers with pasta, such as rigatoni. Or serve it over spaghetti or linguini. Or simply serve it on a plate, with whatever you’d like. Tonight, I’m serving it as is, on the plate, next to my homemade manicotti, with some string beans that have been blanched and sautéed with garlicky, toasty bread crumbs.

Here’s how to make classic Italian Sausage and Peppers.

Serves 3-4. Feel free to double or triple the recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 package (4 sausages) frozen Impossible™ Italian sausage, hot or mild. *

• A generous glug of good olive oil

• 1 large onion, peeled, cut in half, and sliced into ½” slices

• About 12 ounces sweet bell peppers. Go for a mixture of red, orange, green, and yellow—whatever you like, cut into ½ “ wide strips, seeds removed.

• 3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

• A few pinches of herbs, dried or fresh—oregano, thyme, basil …

  * or genuine Italian pork sausage.

Method:

• Pour about 2 tablespoons olive oil into a large skillet. Warm the oil and add the sausages. Cook them, turning with tongs, until they’re browned all around. Then remove them from the pan and let them cool on a cutting board. When they’re cool, slice them crosswise into slices.

• Into the same skillet, add the onions and peppers and sauté them over low/medium heat until they’re very soft and tender. Then turn up the heat, add the herbs, and continue to sauté the vegetables until they’re starting to caramelize.

• Add in the sliced sausage slices and the garlic, and sauté for a about 5 minutes more until everything is hot and cooked through.

• Serve as is, or add to pasta, or add some tomato sauce if you like.