Kim's Sausage and Peppers

It must be Williamsburg's Italian feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola that got me in the mood for sausage and peppers. Why I'd use the oven in 90 degree weather when I could have just popped over to the festival, I'm not quite sure...

This is based on my sister's recipe for sausage and peppers, with a few additions that I've played around with the last few times I've made it. A certain someone convinced me to make my own sauce this time, which makes it slightly less of a quick meal, but at least it got me into trying to work on homemade sauces. Still, this works well with a large jar of pre-made sauce from the grocery store, also making it a fast weeknight meal.

I used a Bittman basic tomato sauce recipe, and it came out a little thin, but this might have been because I put too many minced onions in it, which became watery in the food processor. I think it might have been fine otherwise, and it seems like a good starter recipe for making your own sauce.

The sauce recipe below is doubled because the sausage and peppers recipe makes a ton of food, and I like to have some extra sauce on hand. If you want to make less food, you can halve both the sauce and sausage and pepper measurements.

Tomato Sauce

6 tablespoons olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced, or 1 small onion, minced
2 (28-ounce) cans whole plum tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tablespoons Italian seasonings, or a mixture or dried basil, oregano, etc... I think you can be pretty creative here with whichever seasonings you like... Bittman left these out though.

1. Warm 4 tablespoons of the oil with the garlic or onion in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is lightly golden or the onion is translucent.

2. Drain the tomatoes and crush them with a fork or your hands and add them to the skillet with salt and pepper. Raise the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture becomes "saucy" (about 10 minutes). Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil, and add salt to taste.

Sausage and Peppers

1-2 packages (depending on how much sausage you want) hot Italian sausages (or mild if you prefer)
3 green peppers
3 red peppers
1 large onion

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Slice peppers and onions and mix into a 13x9 oven safe pan with the sausages sliced into 1 inch sections. The oil from the sausages will cook the peppers and onions. Cook for about 40 minutes or until the sausages are browned and the peppers and onions are soft.

3. Mix sausage and pepper mixture with tomato sauce in a large pot on the stove, and heat up for another 10 minutes or so.

4. Serve over pasta with Italian bread.


One day I'll try to make sauce using fresh tomatoes, but canned works for now!

I think I need to get a bigger pan here...

The whole shebang: