These sausage-stuffed peppers combine ground pork sausage with onions, chopped peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic and zucchini, cooked rice, and topped with cheese for a twist on the usual beef stuffing.
Pork Sausage Stuffed Peppers Recipe with Rice
Whether your bell peppers come from the farmers market, grocery store or your backyard garden, you'll love this twist on a traditional dish.
My husband loves stuffed green peppers, but I always thought they tasted rather bland. Quite by accident I came up with a new recipe that we both love, and I'm sure you will too.
The secret? Mild-flavored pork sausage instead of the traditional ground beef.
We'd raised a couple of hogs for the freezer, and had an abundance of pork sausage. I also had an abundance of green peppers from my garden (they grow like crazy), and a lightbulb lit up in my brain.
Ingredients needed for sausage stuffed green peppers with rice
1 pound of mild pork sausage
half an onion, sliced
chopped green pepper
sliced mushrooms
finely-chopped or thin-sliced zucchini or yellow squash
1 chopped tomato
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup cooked rice
spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce (canned or homemade)
6 or more whole bell peppers for stuffing
Using ground pork sausage really boosts the flavor of the stuffing in this recipe.
Because it was the height of summer garden season, I had an assortment of vegetables in the refrigerator. I chopped an onion, more peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, a tomato, and a clove of garlic.
Use peppers that stand up well on their own for stuffing. If you have some long, narrow or misshapen peppers, chop them up to go in the filling.
To make the stuffed pepper filling
Brown the sausage, then remove it from the skillet and allow to drain. Pour off most of the fat from the skillet, leaving enough to saute the vegetables.
Add the chopped vegetables to the skillet and saute until they are tender. Add the garlic last so it doesn't burn. Drain off any remaining fat.
Add a cup of cooked rice and enough of the sauce to moisten the filling, and stir it all together. Season with salt and pepper.
Preparing the green bell peppers
Remove the tops of the green bell peppers, and if necessary, slice a bit off the bottom so they'll stand up well in the baking dish, leaving the bottom intact without holes.
Hollow out the peppers with a paring knife or serrated spoon.
Coat the bottom of the baking dish with a thin layer of sauce, and set the empty peppers in the dish.
Spoon the stuffing mixture into the peppers. Sprinkle the tops with shredded cheese - we love cheddar or mozzarella on ours, but pepper jack would be delicious too, with an additional layer of flavor.
Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes, then poke the peppers with a fork to test doneness. Bake longer if needed, they should be fork tender.
Substitutions and leftover stuffing mixture ideas
Feel free to use whatever vegetables you have in your refrigerator or in your garden, and to substitute hot sausage instead of the mild-flavored ground pork sausage I used.
If you run out of peppers to stuff before you run out of the stuffing mixture, try stuffing a few squash boats (cut yellow squash in half lengthwise and remove the seeds) or hollowed-out tomatoes.
I added some extra stuffing mixture to quesadillas along with additional grated cheddar cheese. Those were some of the best quesadillas I've ever eaten.
Or use the stuffing mixture inside omelettes for breakfast or brunch.
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